Exaltation to Exile
by Bub-Omb
Summary: The League of Legends is know for its incredible noble goal of achieving peace throughout the land by allowing conflict to be settled inside of its walls on the Fields of Justice, creating a lack of need for war and death. But how far can this goal extend, and how does it plan to contain those not willing to oblige? Chapters with the same numerical are occurring simultaneously.
1. Chapter 1: Garen Vs Katarina

Cold steel clashed against brave armor as a battle to the death was endured. Garen, from Demacia, a large man of a muscular stature with short brown hair and a sturdy face, clad from neck to toe in armor and wielding a long sword meant for a two handed grip in just his right hand, was in a deep combat with a woman named Katarina from Demacia's rivaling country, Noxus, who was equipped in quite the opposite manner: she wore tight leather to allow for maximum mobility and fought with long daggers, one in each hand, with a beautiful array of smaller knifes and projectiles lining her hips and sides, with her long red hair dancing all around as she slid from corner to corner of the room dodging the brutes swings and attempting to pierce his armor with her weapons. They were both members of an organized fighting arena called the League of Legends, where the strongest of fighters throughout the world of Runeterra pit to settle their disagreements. Inside the League, the members who fought were called champions, while the members who brought them to the arena were called summoners. Summoners do exactly what their name would suggest: summon champions to the fields of justice. On the fields themselves, the champions are at no real harm. Gunshots are taken like slingshot wounds, dismemberments are healed back, and death is only endured for minutes before reverted. The idea is to allow the strongest of champions to fight for their country, so that regular soldiers do not have to. This is quite a pleasurable alternative to the mass slaughtering of countrymen, while these battles are more so determined by the strength of the strongest members anyways. While the League has not yet succeeded in removing war from the lands all together, its increasing popularity has definitely started to make a dramatic impact.

Its main flaw however, is one seen right now. These two champions are locked in the fury of battle outside of the fields of justice. The members of the League are growing more and more anxious for their next fight, and some to the point of picking battles even when not summoned, just to get their fix in. But this was soon to be contested…

Garen lifted his sword up high over his head, using both hands for a change, and swung it straight down on to Katarina. She quickly rolled out of the way of the falling blade and pulled out some spare blades of her own. As Garen's sword clang against the ground, she threw the blades as well aimed to his skull as possible, just to see him lower his shoulder towards her in a football player's stance and deflect the incoming projectiles on his shoulder pad.

"Still hiding under that armor Garen?" She mocked.

"Still hoping to distract your opponents through flaunting your cleavage?" he retorted quickly.

"I'm just not still hiding myself in the armor given by my over protective mother." Garen grinned. The two were like this all of the time. They had the most peculiar rivalry of all of the champions in the League. They seemed to hate each other as well as love each other; taking every chance to available to battle one another with the incredible pride held in their home country. However, Garen has been known to protect her on occasion, blocking potentially lethal blows thrown her way by his own allies in the heat of battle. They have some sort of deeper connection or relationship not understood by anyone but themselves. They continued to fight, blade and knife clashing and sparking, echoing throughout the halls. They were standing in a square room inside the Institute of war, the Leagues main headquarters and housing for all of its champions and summoners, with long hallways protruding from each of the walls, the floor mainly cleared in front of them. Few decorations were in the room, being a long forgotten and abandoned section of the Institute, making it a perfect spot for their battle. Fighting within the institute was strictly prohibited, with punishment beyond imagination, in attempt to promote the peaceful environment outside of the Fields of Justice. The room was a pale blue colored, made out of some sort of marble like material, making the walls and floor fairly slick, allowing for plenty of sliding and maneuvering.

Garen thrust his sword in a stabbing motion at Katarina just to watch her slide to the side of the blade and take the opportunity to throw a dagger parallel to his sword towards him. He lifted his left arm and deflected the blade, while withdrawing his sword from its current position to his side. He lifted the sword to his right side, holding it perpendicular to his body. He began to spin around wildly, slicking his feet along the ground in a talented waltzing formation approaching Katarina as he span. The woman reacted quickly, hitting the ground and rolling to the side to avoid his onslaught of whirling blade. When Garen noticed her avoidance, he quickly stopped his rotation and locked on to her, not swaying an inch while he stood.

"I'll never understand how that's possible" She thought out loud. He lowered his sword and grinned.

"Watch my feet" He responded. He mimicked the motion, without the sword raised, as Katarina watched carefully. He eyes widened as she had realized the pattern his feet took allowing him to rotate while moving in one controlled direct. She raised her blades, one in each hand pointing opposite directions, and began to imitate the dance. She made it a few steps, rotating with incredible precision to what Garen had showed her, but lost her balance after a few feet and had to stop. Garen laughed out loud at this and re-readied his sword.

"And the dizziness?" She asked, referring to the feeling she had quickly generated rotating at such a ridiculous pace.

"Patience" He replied softly. She looked incredibly annoyed at this response and threw two daggers towards his neck. He swiftly deflected them with his sword as Katarina slid across the room towards him. While his arms were still raised to deflect the previous attack, she lunged past him, digging her knifes into the side of his armor and yanking him to the ground with the force of her momentum and gravity pulling on her body. She rolled backwards and looked at Garen lying on the ground, quite disoriented from the fall in his heavy armor. A menacing smile eroded over her face as she realized that she had just created a wonderful opportunity to launch an attack for some serious damage. She readied another knife and threw it straight at his exposed skull. The blade flew through the air but only for a second before stopping in mid flight. She was so busy basking in her victory that she did not notice the sudden stop of movement in the instant that it happened.

Garen lie on the ground in a heap and heard Katarina laughing to herself. He expected a throwing knife to be launched in his direction momentarily and immediately swung his sword in an arch through the air, intersecting in mid swing where he expected the blade to be. To his surprise he did not hear a clang of deflected metal bouncing off of his sword and onto the ground, but instead the sound of cutting flesh. He collected himself and sat up from his pile on the floor to see what had happened. Garen saw a man standing with his back to him a few feet in front, dressed in mostly purple with a hood pulled up over the back of his head. He wore a cape split into strands, with blades attached to the ends of each strand. However, the cape was not complete. Part of it was dangling from the back of his neck while the other lay on the ground, slit in half by Garen's blade. Across his back, just under the point where his cape was split in two, was a two foot gash, at least two inches in depth.

Katarina looked up to see a man whom she knew quite well standing in front of her, holding her knife in his hand, lightly cutting into the flesh of his fingers and palm, with the tip just inches from his chest. Katarina's eyes widened as she realized that someone had found out her and Garen's little midnight clash.

"Talon…" she said in a voice barely above a whisper. The man in purple grinned at her, eyes covered by the hood he wore.

"I thought I told you to stop fighting before the League exiles you" He replied in a soft, steady voice.

"I… well…" She croaked, too ashamed to even look at his face. She turned around and began to head back to her living quarters inside of the institute when she heard a body hit the ground. She immediately turned around to see Talon face first on the floor, a gash oozing blood all over the floor, with a mighty Demacian clambering to his feet immediately behind him. Her eyes widened once again as she collected what had happened. She ran back into the room screaming out his name.

"TALON! TALON! LISTEN TO ME! TALON!" She shouted at the man, praying that he was still conscious enough to hear her pleas. She crouched next to him, rolled him over to take his head in her hands, peeled back his hood, and looked into his face.

"I love you…" He stated as he drifted off into unconsciousness. Garen had taken a knee to the fallen man's other side and placed his hand underneath Katarina's chin. The mighty soldier lifted her face level with his and peered into her over stimulated watering eyes.

"If anyone asks you, you have no idea what happened. You do not know where Talon or I am, and you spent this night in your room as you should have. Do I make myself excruciatingly clear?" He said in an almost growling tone, as he would use while giving an urgent command to a soldier. She looked at him, flustered, upset, and confused. However, she nodded and ran back down the hallway she had begun to flee down moments ago, her deep red hair flowing behind her as she sprinted, torchlight reflecting off of her occasional tear drop falling to ground, resembling a crystal in the sunlight. Garen bowed his head and spoke softly to the unconscious man, wrapping the grave wound with his shirt in attempt to ease the bleeding.

"I'll keep you safe Talon… You will live through this. Be strong, and trust the ones whose care I place you in…" He slung the limp body over his shoulder, and took off down the hall. He had one note to leave behind, his equipment to drop off to be sure that no one knew his leave was conscious, and then to leave this place as fast as possible to ensure Talon's, Katarina's, The League's, Demacia's and his own safety.


	2. Chapter 2A: Garen the Exile

He left one last note on his younger sister's door. He was positive that she would receive it whenever she was home. The note had nothing but one word scribbled across it. The note read, west. Being of the intelligence that she is, he knew she would understand. He had left Talon where he knew he would receive the care he needed in total isolation from the League, the Institute, or the Fields of Justice. And so he walked. He walked until his boots wore holes. He walked until his feet wore calluses. He walked until his feet bled. He had no direction. No purpose. No way to go and no reason. He walked, and walked, and walked. He could not go back to the Institute, not yet. He needed to allow things to settle before he went back. He needed Talon to heal and to have his own name cleared. Until then, he was an outcast. A rouge, a... an exile. Self imposed? Perhaps. Would it have come in time, had he not just left on his own accord? Extremely likely. He left his armor and no trace of his existence or whereabouts aside from his note to his sister. He knew Lux would not tell anyone about the letter or what it meant. Who he cared about knew where he was. And that's all that mattered.

Garen had taken with him a trench coat, and some simple armaments such as gloves and boots and clothes on his back. The trench coat was only about half of his legs in length, not quite drooping to his knees. He didn't own a sword that did not belong to Demacia or the League itself, so he did not bother bringing any actual weapons. Being a champion of the League he assumed himself to be fairly safe from danger simply through his strength. He was at a fault though, since he did not have any control of mana, something that separated him from the strength of most champions in the League.

Garen eventually stopped walking. He had no idea where he was, but he knew was far away. He slumped up against a tree, and slid down along it, back scraping the bark as he sank. But not only was he sink, his mood was as well. Drowning, perhaps. He had no idea what to do, what to live for. He was not planning to take his own life; he saw very little purpose to such an act. But he didn't have anyone to help, anyone to assist, anyone to listen to, or have listen to him, to play with, to converse with, to live with. He was truly in a world all by himself. He wanted to shudder at the thought, and normally would, but he couldn't pull himself to do so. He was so upset with himself and everything around him that he couldn't even be bothered to care. So often did he just accept what he had for granted. He loved many people in this world, but when he seeked to them for help, he found rarely was one willing to love him back. He let out a sigh. Not that it helped anything. But it didn't really hurt either. He let out another sigh, and another. Eventually he wondered if someone would come by and see a large man in a coat slumped against a tree with his feet bleeding from around the openings in his shoes, sighing like a broken record. He looked around and saw a loosely dense forest, trees spaced about 20 feet apart, scattered randomly as nature had let them grow. Plenty of light shone in from above, lighting up any are not directly under the protective shadow of a trees leaves. A small creek ran about 30 feet away from him, no end or beginning in sight. He looked at the creek longingly, almost as if it was going to provide him comfort and spring up a person to just give him company. He laughed aloud for the first time in awhile.  
"Creek, springing up a person. It's a pun. Also ridiculous, butchya know…" He had no idea why his mind was so aloof or why he was talking aloud. It was almost as if he thought someone, somewhere may actually be listening to him.

After some time he fell asleep, sitting awkwardly against the trees trunk. A rustling of branches and cracking of twigs awoke him, and he looked around. He had no doubt that he heard footsteps, most likely hostile, but for some reason he didn't care. Well, he knew the reason; the on setting depression was siphoning out all of his emotion like Gragas did beer in a flask: so fast that most had no idea the flask was full to begin with. Gragas would often times get free beer this way, perplexing even the bartenders as to the possibility of such an act, and resulting in not being charged at all for the beer that they couldn't prove was given to him. Charge. Again, Garen had left everything behind. He had no money on him, and hoped he wouldn't have regretted that. Maybe a little spare cash just in case he made a mistake? No. He needed to be gone. Gone, gone. Not just on a temporary leave, undoubtedly returning. While he hoped he could one day return, he could not allow the thought to plague his mind.

At this point Garen had become so lost in his own random thoughts that the stranger found it curious. She had never once seen a man of such large stature, sit around completely unarmed, and not even bother to move at the sound of someone approaching. She decided that the man could not possibly be of too much harm, seeing as he remained completely still all the way up to the point in which she was standing literally inches from his side. At this point in time the man finally looked up at her. He was unshaven, but only for a few days. He didn't have length to his beard, but it was definitely attempting to make an appearance for the first time in years. His hair was ruffled, but clearly had a genetic wave to it, almost as if it was supposed to be curly, but was losing the battle. His eyes had bags under them. The bags were clearly exposed due to lack of sleep and a troubled mind. His face bore no emotion, an expression she had seen only once before, and that was just moments ago when she saw her on reflection in the creek she had crossed to get to him. He broke the silent staring contest after a few moments.

"Can I help you?" he asked in a serious manner. Such a question was expected to be said in total sarcasm, to portray an obvious distaste of a strangers company. But it wasn't. It was said in genuine curiosity, with a lust in his voice, as if he wanted nothing more but for the question to be answered with a yes. And in fact, the question was meant to be taken seriously. Upon examining the woman standing beside him, he noticed that she was in a state very reminiscent of his own. Her hair was torn and scrambled, sitting atop her head like a used mop. It was a sleek silver, very peculiar to see in someone's hair, especially a woman of such a young age. She looked to be in her mid twenties, but bore a small frame. From a distance, she could have been mistaken for a teenager. Her clothes were worn and patched up. She wore what seemed to be a spare cloth wrapped around her waist many times, remnants of a shoulder pad strapped to her around her side, wearing some sort of wrappings to conceal the space between old armor bits that she still wore. Her boots were old, and probably lacked a sole. He could not tell from his stance however, seeing as she was still standing.

His question seemed to startle her. "ME?" She asked. "Look at YOU!" she retorted. Glancing down his body towards his feet he saw what he had noted just prior to having fallen asleep and laughed aloud.

"Ha ha ha! I was just thinking about that a few moments ago actually." He responded.

"Thinking about how you look?" She asked quizzically.

"Yeah" he sighed. He started to get to his feet and she put a hand on his lower arm, kneeling down beside him as he reverted back to his original position.

"You shouldn't get up, your feet are bleeding." She told him.

"I am aware, but I haven't got a way to rinse them off if I am sitting here, now have I?" He said. At this point he looked at the sword in her other hand. The blade was jagged, and short, as if a long sword had been shattered. This took him by surprise. The force required to smash a long sword of any decent craftsmanship was so intense that such an impact is very unlikely to have left its wielder alive. "How did that happen?" he asked, pointing at the sword. Noticing the random jumping of topics, she looked at him with a puzzled face. She did not answer either question, but patted his arm twice and stood up from her squat. She walked over to the stream and took off her shoulder piece. She turned it upside down, the concave part facing the sky, and scooped it full of water. She walked back towards Garens location, crouched down, and tore off a piece of the extra cloth wrapped around her waist, soaking it in the water from the shoulder piece. She removed Garen's boots and began to wash his feet. Garen bore a shocked looked on his face. Cleaning ones feet was something for maids, or servants: people below you.

"Ma'am, I cannot allow you to wash my feet!" he said aloud to her. She looked at him with a grimace.

"First of all, it's not ma'am, it's Riven. Secondly, is that how you always respond to someone helping you out?" This question confused took him by as much shock as her actions did, but he found it in his best interest not to push it any further. So he decided to take the most logical approach to her actions.

"I do apologize, Miss Riven. I thank you for your kindness. I am Garen."

"Riven. Just, Riven." She responded. He laughed aloud again, with the same seemingly over exaggerated chuckle as he did before.

"Ha! Alright Riven." A silence sank in as she continued to wipe the blood from his feet and wrap the wounds with the cloth she had torn off previously. "You seem to be quite… resourceful" he said keeping in mind her usage of the shoulder pad and the spare cloth around her waist.

"I learned." She responded. She didn't seem to look to want to say anything about this strange comment, and Garen took not of it.

"Oh?" he asked with the same curiosity as he did when her first asked if she needed help. "Well, you never did answer me. Do you need help? What are you doing out here all by yourself?"

"I could as the same of you." She responded with an intentional irritation to the response.

"Fair enough. I've been walking." He said.

"Walking? You're bleeding and look like you've been wrestling a bear!"

"I have. I walked until I bled. And the bear is simply a bear of consciousness, ravaging about my mind as if it had young buried deep inside, pleading for help." She responded to this comment with silence, yet again. He stared off into the woods, as if there were answers lying deep inside, just waiting on him to dig them out.

"A bear on the mind is a burden. You cannot properly assist someone with a burden." She said."

"I know. And that is why the bear is still there. I know I can't help anyone or anything from where I am at. Perhaps I was hoping you'd answer me with a yes, just to make me feel purpose." He told her. He wasn't sure why he was being so outright with her, but at the same time he did. There was truth to his words. He was feeling useless, and needed to save himself from the hole he was sinking into. And in all honesty, helping someone out would help him begin to climb out of this hole. It'd be a start to a seemingly impossible ascension. She took his word for truth. She had finished wrapping his feet, still squatting down, legs out to the sides with her arms resting on either one, with hands holding one another in the middle. She was looking at her hands, as if longing for them to talk for her. Eventually she spoke up.

"I suppose I could use some help. But I don't know how. I'm lost." She said gloomily.

"Lost, but you know your way around these." He said to her. She looked up at him, eyes wide. She understood what he meant. He was suggesting that she is lost mentally, not physically. This is exactly what she had intended for her words to say, but did not assume Garen would understand them.

"How do you…" She began, but started to trail off and Garen picked up her sentence for her.

"Know how you feel? Well look at us. We look as if we have bears in our minds and bears in our paths. We are beaten up and broken, waiting to be re-forged. Not many stable men would just walk until their feet bleed, would they? And not many stable woman would run around a forest aiding wounded men wearing half a suit of armor and torn clothing, and wielding a shattered sword." He looked at the sword again, keeping in mind his thoughts from earlier. "That wasn't done by a foe, was it?" She stared at him blankly for what seemed to be hours. She was completely astounded. She had absolutely no idea how this man, lying slumped to a tree and wounded, in the middle of nowhere, with hardly an idea as to whom he is, was intelligent enough to put together all that he had in such a short time frame, based simply off of observations. Garen chose not to return her stare, but instead go to his feet and walked towards the creek. He knelt down and began to drink the water that flowed over the jagged, randomly assorted rocks below. He was about to get back to his feet when he saw Riven come sit next to him, putting her feet on the opposite side of the creek, allowing the water to flow underneath her bent legs like a bridge over a river. He decided not to stand as he had intended, and sat cross legged next to her.

"Am I dreaming?" She asked aloud. Garen noticed that she had not asked him, and did not know if he should respond to it or not. To his relief, he didn't have to, seeing as she continued to talk.

"We were ambushed" She started. "I was fighting them, just as I was instructed to do so. I was considered such a valuable soldier, not just a pawn or a knight. I held up high, and treated as such. I had earned it myself through my valor and struggles. My commanding officer gave me this sword to prove it." She looked down at the broken remnants of the sword she had once held firmly against her foes, holding it both of her hands, as if it were a precious artifact. "I don't know who would have ordered such an attack, or why. But all that I know is that it happened. Me and my men… so many soldiers willing to sacrifice their lives for the greater good… or so I was told. I learned quite quickly that these men were not willing to die for the cause. But I don't think that the cause was even being held onto anymore. It's been corrupted. But the men… they ran, they scattered like flies. Not that it was their fault, I did too. We all did. I just wish… more had lived? No. I wish it hadn't happened…" She was crying. Tears trickled down her cheeks and onto the fractured sword in her hands. "WHY DID IT HAPPEN?!" She yelled in frustration, not expecting a response, but longing for an answer, exerting her anger. "It poured down like rain, but it scorched the earth beneath it, searing the very soul of the individual it touched. This… chemical. It was… horrendous. So many people dying… so many crying… so many helpless… so many praying that it would all end. I saw their faces as I ran. I fled the battlefield. The pure vision was not pure anymore. It has had a seed of evil placed among it and this seed has taken root, and is flourishing on all of the pure water around it, soaking it in to produce its own fruits of terror… They killed their own soldiers… just to win the battle… Noxus has lost its cause… and I… I don't know…" Garen just sat in silence. He listened to her story, but did not know how to comfort her. Had this story been told to him at any other point in time in his life, he would have ended her in an instant. But here he sat, listening to her story, feeling sorry for her, longing to help, knowing that she is of Noxian blood. But he no longer had it in him. He had exiled himself for many reasons. He did not plan to go back, and he was setting his own array of ideologies and purposes. He no longer had the mindset of a true Demacian, and did not plan to re adopt it. He took his arm around her shoulder, and held her tight. It probably was not his place to do so, but a woman in pain is not something he could allow to just pass. He sat there in silence as she wept holding his arm around her for a long time.

"You know your ideology Riven" He said at long last, breaking the silence. "You do not have to believe what these people do. They are not you."

"But… it's my beliefs… my people… I smashed my sword to pieces once I escaped. I felt that it stood for everything that was wrong, everything that is now corrupt…"

"Their beliefs have changed. And so can you. All people can change. This is what makes us human, and not animals." Garen thought about what he said. There was a lot of truth to the statement. He needed to take his own words to heart. Perhaps this is why he wanted someone so badly. He knew that he could talk his way out of his own slump, but he had no idea as to where he should begin. However, if someone started his thoughts for him, things usually fell into place. Riven finally took her head up from her folded arms.

"Yeah… you're right." She said.

Garen chuckled "I know I am. But for some reason I was missing it myself. And it took talking to you for me to realize this… Thank you Riven." He removed his arm from her shoulder and took to his feet. She pulled her feet towards her, dragging them through the creek, and stood up beside him. She looked at him, her face saying "Where to now?" He smiled down at her. "I need your help Riven; I seem to have misplaced my sword. Do you know where I could get one?" He asked.

"Get one? No. Make one? Yes. Let's go Garen." She walked in front of him, leading him out of the forest. He paused for a moment, then smiled, and followed her.

The two walked through the forest for quite some time. They seemed to be following some sort of path, but Garen had no idea what kind of trail it could possibly be. Riven led the way, scarcely slowing her pace no matter what obstacle lay on the path. It seems she knew exactly where she was headed. Eventually Garen felt his stomach growl, and after awhile the growling grew quite audible. Upon hearing this, Riven finally stopped walking forward. She turned and grinned at him.

"Shall we stop for food?" She asked

"Well, we haven't got a proper sword on either of us" he replied. She responded to this by trading her grin for a full on smile.

"What counts as a "proper sword"?" She asked mockingly.

"Well, I suppose I have no argument. Any idea what's edible around here? Or do you plan to hunt something with your shattered blade?" She looked at him and gave a simple response.

"Why don't you go collect fire wood? I'll get the meat." While slightly taken aback by this remark, he did understand that the wood was going to be needed, so he decided to hold his tongue and responded to her command with a nod. Command; Huh, he thought. She had phrased her order like a question, but somehow Garen understood it as one. It had seemed to be a very long time since he had last taken an order. Hell, all I used to DO was take orders, he thought. But... There was some solace that he found in carrying out the task. He walked around the local area collecting dry pieces of wood, making sure not to branch off too far from the point where Riven had left him. A lot of the wood was wet due to a recent rain, and Garen started to wonder if a fire would even start with what he had collected. He wondered how he had even managed to last so long without food. He had taken some small rations with him, ate some wild fruits and berries that he recognized to be safe, and even had a squirrel he had accidentally stepped on. He knew he weighed a fair amount due to his large stature, but he did not expect to kill a small creature with his step, especially without donning his armor.

He collected a fair amount of wood and made a clearing in the ground, isolating the created pit from the nearby foliage with rocks and stones. He took some of the longer, thicker pieces that he knew would not readily burn, and stuck them on either side of the pit. He grabbed a sharp rock from his circle and used it to split the ends of the sticks not currently stuck in the ground. He split them deep enough not to destroy their structural integrity, but deep enough to support a third stick balancing between the two. Garen wasn't quite sure how large of animal Riven was going to bring back for them, but he figured they could roast parts of the animal over the fire if it was too heavy for his supports as a whole.

He sat on a collapsed tree near his recently built campsite and looked up at the sky. It was darkening, but plenty of light still filled the sky. He remembered the adventures he had gone on with Lux, his little sister, when the two of them were younger. She was a master at the magical craft. She could bend the light around them to make any sky look like noon. He grinned at the thought. Perhaps enough of a concentration of such light would get his fire started for him. He had no idea how he was going to pull that off as of now. If only he had control on the mana flowing in the world around him. He had never managed to tap into the source of power in the way that Lux did with such ease. He loved her and felt terrible for his sudden disappearance. He prayed that she understood his note. It was intentionally stating a cardinal direction opposite of where he went. While Lux was to be interrogated or investigated, she could use the note as prove to state that she had no idea apart from what it said. However, she would know Garen to be smarter than to leave a trail for a private search party. Therefore, the most logical direction for him to have fled is the opposite. She'd figure it out eventually, if she didn't right away. She didn't graduate at the top of her class every year of her life and excel in her military covert ops because of luck; he knew that for a fact.

His train of thought was interrupted when he heard some of the nearby brush rustle. He stood up and walked towards the location where the sound came from, and saw Riven walking towards him. He thought that perhaps she was dragging something, because he could not see anything from the top half of her that was visible over the chest high grass she was walking through. Upon getting closer he noted that there was no sound of a dragging corpse, just footsteps. He grinned.

"Broken blade did not quite cut it huh? Or are you having trouble finding something?" He yelled out to her as he approached. She flashed a glare at him with a grim look on her face.

"I did get a deer" she replied dully, "But I wasn't fast enough in bringing it back". Garen gave her a confused look. Meat rotted, sure, but not at that speeds. She must have meant something else by her remark.

"Are you injured?" He asked, while still on the approach. They were just about within talking distance, both walking through the tall prairie grass. "Do you need me to carry the deer?"

"No, no. The deer is lost. A pack of wolves jumped on me as I was carrying the deer. I tried to out run them but I wasn't fast enough with the added weight. Then I tried to fight them but I haven't got the range or mobility I needed to kill 'em. So I dropped the deer and they went straight to it, ignoring me as I left."

"Huh" Garen replied. "Well ya know... Wolf meat ain't so bad." She wore a face of doubt and distaste. By this point in time the two were right next to each other, back a few steps to keep Riven from having to cram her neck upwards to look into Garen's face. The height difference between the two was quite noticeably a heads length when they stood so close. He looked at the bugs jumping back and forth from atop the grass. He quickly shook his head, as if the thought were something that could be simply shaken out. "No, we can't eat that..." He said under his breath, half intentionally thinking aloud. Riven heard him however.

"Eat what?" She asked him, clearly confused by his ramblings. He looked up at her to speak.

"Let's go back to the wolves" he said, choosing to ignore her question. She looked a bit irritated by his lack of explanation and seemingly random jumping of conversation, but chose to go along with him, seeing as she did not have a back up option for food. She turned around and they walked along the half flattened grassy path towards where Riven's catch was being devoured, and came upon a clearing in the forest. The ground was muddy and loosely covered by dead grass and torn leaves. The tall grass where Riven and Garen were crouched, observing the scene, ended rather abruptly about ten feet from the wolves, still feasting ravenously upon the dead deer. There were a few trees surrounding the clearing, with small patches of dying grass scattered throughout the perimeter. A few slopes surrounded the area, presumably causing much of the rainwater to roll down into the area, drowning out most plants and leaving the area muddy. It was literally, a perfect ambush spot.

"The wolves must be pretty smart to camp out in an area like this to get their prey. The most viable escape route would be straight through these tall grass patches where we are sitting. And any animal on 4 legs would be hindered greatly by moving through here. However, the flattened path from the fleeing animal would not slow the wolves down by much" Garen talked quietly, as not to be heard by the wolves, but at a volume where Riven could hear him clearly. She looked at him astonished.

"Wow. I suppose you're right Garen. I didn't notice that the first time I was here getting attacked." She stated. He pondered as to whether or not that was sarcasm, but judging by the look on her face she was being quite serious. He then remembered something. He had not told her anything beyond his name and the fact that he had walked a long distance. She probably had no idea as to his military strength or cunning. He grinned. Perhaps it is time to show some of that strength off, he thought.

"Lend me your sword, if you will ma'am" he said to Riven. She turned her head towards him, wearing an expression of annoyance.

"RIVEN" she said in a voice much louder than necessary given the situation. "And secondly, I thought it was too broken to hunt"

"I was proven to be incorrect. However, this is not about hunting, but self defense. In such case, a broken bottle is better than a bear fist". She was quite clearly discouraged by his manner of not clarifying, but she saw his rugged face looking back at her innocently and his outstretched hand. She rolled her eyes at him.

"Here, just take it." She said while placing her broken blade into his palm. He gripped the handle firmly and took a sprinters stance at the edge of the grass. He stared not at the pack of wolves, but at the center of them, where the deer lay. Within an instant, Garen leapt through the air and landed right on target, the soft flesh and uneaten meat squishing at his feet. He then extended his arm, holding the blade, perpendicular to his body, and dug his right heel into the middle of the deer. His left foot was planted firmly on the ground, deep enough in the mud to keep him in place by the one grounded leg. He landed in a crouched position that looked as if he was fighting for his life in a frantic, failing attempt. The wolves immediately looked up from their feast and started to growl at the intruder. Garen took action, swiveling himself around by kicking off with his dug heel, dragging the corpse on his foot. The limp deer smacked into a number of the wolves, knocking them back with a loud thud, and the deer landed on top them. Garen's back was now turned to the remaining wolves, while he faced the ones under the deer's dog pile. He planted his right foot to the side of him and spun around with his blade arm out stretched instead of his foot. The blade slit the throat of one of the wolves as it lunged towards him. Two were left in front of him and three managed to clamber out from behind the upturned deer. The wolves formed a circle around him once again, and readied to assault. Garen remained very still, watching the wolves carefully while listening for movement from the wolves behind him. All five wolves pounced at the same time and Garen mimicked his same tactic. He spun around swinging the blade high and low, while smashing his unarmed fist into critical areas of the wolves' skulls. Within 3 seconds of the blind assault from the wolves, Garen had finished his dance of death, and every wolf lay limp in piles around him, looking as if a plague had wrung through the area. He looked up, stood upright, wiped the blood off of the blade, and walked towards Riven's location in the grass. She sat on her rear, jaw agape, as if she had literally been blown back from a blast.

The two walked back to the camp site, which Garen had created, in almost silence, carrying a few of the less mutilated wolves. Garen whistled for most of the walk, quite pleased in his capability of taking on a pack of wolves simultaneously. He was a bit tired though, seeing as he was not in the league, leaving energy a bit more scarce to come by in the natural world, and he lacked food to fuel him. Upon reaching the sight, Riven struck her blade against her shoulder pad a few times to create a spark, lighting Garen's campfire. He kept busy piling on dead grass and small twigs, trying to ignite the heavy wetted logs at the bottom. Meanwhile, Riven skinned one of the wolves, and once they had accomplished their individual tasks, the two of them skewered their meal and placed it across the fire, resting on the split end logs stuck in the ground. They roasted it whole, planning to eat around the unwanted organs and insides.

While eating the red meat of the wolf, Riven finally spoke up, voicing her concern to Garen.

"Soooo... What was THAT?" She questioned. The thought was announced so far from left field that it almost took Garen off of his feet. After resettling on his up turned tree-bench, he turned to face her.

"Pardon me?" He said.

"That... That... Fighting style! What the hell was is it! Where did it come from? Why would you fight like THAT? How did it work... What was that!?" She repeated. She spoke so quickly, while completely flustered with herself, that she could hardly continue a singular train of thought. She was like a little kid at a magic show, so full of questions, but not one of them could be verbalized.

"I was a soldier and a champion" He stated, hoping that would help clarify. However, this just widened her eyes. Obviously he had just spawned even more questions.

"Soldier!? For what army!? And Champion of what!? What kind of soldier needs to fight like that!?" she seemed to be increasing in velocity as she continued to talk, each word spoken faster than the previous one.

"I am… was, a soldier in the Demacian army. I was a Crownguard. Garen Crownguard" He began, preparing to start telling his story, but Riven cut him off again to add more questions to the pile of already existing ones, while her pupils expanded to the point of engulfing the entirety of her eyes.

"THE Garen Crownguard!? I've heard only stories of how you are a ruthless fighter, and serve in the League of Legends with undying honor for your country! How the hell are you out here!? What!?" Her head was absolutely spinning with questions. She seemed too confused to even stand. Garen forced a grin, the response he knew appropriate, but the rehashing of the memories was also very painful to him. He turned so that his whole body faced her, and she mimicked. He felt she was very on edge, not knowing if she should run or stay where she was at, too afraid to make a move. He doubted that she trusted him very much, seeing as they've only known each other for a day.

"I have been exiled. I have done something that I should not have, and I had to leave or face the consequences. I was not too afraid to face the consequences, however, my name would be cleared in due time. It was wisest to protect the people I love by leaving. I cannot yet return. It is too soon. But that is where my combat experience has come from; my years in the Demacian military and as a champion in the League of Legends. I cannot explain my actions, I cannot allow for information to get into the wrong hands…" He trailed off, not quite sure what questions she still had and what questions had spawned. She just sat there staring at him, not sure if his refusal to explain was something she should worry about or not. Garen looked around at the environment. It was completely dark out; omit the light from the fire in between him and Riven. He looked to the trees and saw an outline of a large blue bird resting on one of the branches. As soon as he saw the creature, it took flight into the black sky. Its movement was so fast that he thought his mind may have just played a trick on him. He chose to ignore it, not sure if the wolf meat was totally cooked or not. He wanted to lie down and rest, but he knew Riven still had q hundred questions or so for him, so he sat still out of respect. When he took his eyes off of the trees and looked back at her. She was still staring straight into his face, as if she could stare the answers out of him. Her next action took him by surprise, as she stood up and approached him. She sat down right next to him on the log where he was sitting, almost touching him with her arm from being so close.

She looked up at him, pupils now down to a normal size. Her eyes no longer showed an expression of confusion, but now of sadness. She knew how he felt, what it meant to be exiled. She had no intention of questioning him further into that subject matter, but was unsure as how to proceed. She knew all that she wanted was someone to talk to, someone to make her feel better, and to truly care about her, when she endured her own self imposed exile. All she wanted to do was provide comfort to the man sitting next to her, who had nothing left from the world he once knew. She looked up at him, and he looked down at her.

Her hair was a mess, Garen thought. He saw the expression she wore and tried to read it as well as he could. She had no intention of creating a conflict out of the Demacian-Noxian rivalry, not due to him being a previous champion in the League, but because he was in need of comfort, and she sought to provide it. He placed his hand on her head, and ruffled her hair a bit, as if she were a young boy, attempting to explain the world to him.

"You have helped me a lot Riven" he started. "Company is about the last thing you want at some points in time, while the first thing you need simultaneously". She smiled at this.

"I know, exactly, what you mean" she replied. Garen took a light grip on her head and turned it away from him. He took both of his hands and placed his thumbs right under her ears, one on either side, at the top of her jaw, and his index fingers touched in the middle of top of her forehead. He made certain that all of her loose hair was on his side of his hands. He ran his hands backwards along her head, towards him, until the met at the center of the back of her head, where he gripped all o the previously loose hair in one hand. He used his other hand to take a piece of loose cloth from his undershirt, inside of his trench coat, and used it to tie the hair together. Had her hair not been so course and short due to her lack of access to proper bathing, it would have made a nice ponytail. But, in the mean time, it looked like a sloppily created bun, with the hair spiking out in different directions. When he had finished she turned back around to face him again. "I'm no lady, Garen. You don't need to try to treat me like one."

"I'm afraid that is all I know how to do ma... Riven" he replied. He noted her look of sarcastic annoyance at his slip up. "I was raised in nobility. I know nothing of dating or flirting with women. If I were to be in a relationship with a woman, it would be predetermine for me, and set up for the best interest of the country". She was a bit disgusted by the idea, and her face reflected it. She was not very fond of the ideology of nobility. Living in Noxus, the chain of command was determined strictly by combat knowledge and your capability to hold power, not by bloodline or gifted strength. It was the Noxian vision she in dreamed, the one she believed in so firmly that she shattered her own sword out of disdain for the newly adopted philosophies for Noxus, the corruption and betrayal.

"This is why Noxus is truly the most free of the two countries" she said to him. "Never would a man not understand how to treat a woman, nor would he refrain from expressing his feelings if he had 'em" she stated. Garen looked at her skeptically. While he was an exile, he had lived there his whole life, eating and breathing Demacia. Her statement made a lot of sense, but also had a lot of falsities.

"Imagine this" he started. "What if you settle down and have a child. When the child is born he is deformed. His brain still functions, his emotions are expressed, and he very well may be the brightest man in the world. However, he cannot hold a sword due to the nature of his deformation. Can you not love your own son for this reason?" Riven was truly thinking about what he had just said. She twiddled her thumbs and stared at her feet for a moment. She finally spoke up.

"I would love him dearly... I would take him to safety... Even if my husband were to refuse" she finally replied.

"This is because you have a heart, Riven. It is because you have a lust to care for others, and protect those who cannot protect themselves. Noxus may have a pure vision to give everyone a fair chance with their survival of the fittest ideology, but Demacia has the pure vision to give a chance to those who start out behind". Again, she thought about what he had said. She didn't want to understand. Her whole life was lived based around these ideologies, and here one man was crushing them with sentences. Perhaps she had been raised in a world of corruption, and only just realized it when betrayed by her own army.

"You uh… never answered my original question" Riven said.

"Which one?" Garen mocked.

"Well… why do you fight like that? You go into the middle. Why outnumber yourself? Make things difficult? Why allow yourself to risk injury?" Garen determined that Riven was done talking about Demacian and Noxian ethics, and had tried to push the conversation in a different direction. However, her comment was more thought inducing than the previous topic.

"Well," Garen started "I feel strongest there. It catches enemies off guard. They don't expect a man to be able to counter from behind. Since I can, and I can do so with enough confidence, I have learned to prefer it. As far as taking injury… well, when you have mustered up the courage to jump into a group of enemies on your own, you tend not to feel the pain of the blows that manage to strike your skin or armor. Perhaps I was so used to being outnumbered that I learned to cope with it? I guess I haven't got a proper answer, to your question, but that is some insight, if it helps."

"Huh" She replied. "Wouldn't you eventually lose your control of mana using it for such an exhausting task?" Garen blushed slightly before responding.

"I uh… do not have a very good control on the mana of the world. I fight on my own strength". She looked at him as if he was joking. She shortly saw that he was not and changed her expression to one of amazement.

"How do you fight in the League then?" She questioned.

"Well, that is why I fight in the League. I have enough strength without mana control that I surpass most normal individuals. There are a few champions who also fight without tapping into a mana source other than me though" He pointed out.

"Most of those champions rely on a different source of power though, right? Some run their own body's energy restrictions or resources, while others fuel their fight through an anger unlike that of anyone else."

"True, however there is one other champion fighting on skill and strength alone" Garen said.

"Katarina" she announced, already knowing the answer, being a fellow Noxian.

"Do you have a control on mana?" he asked. She shook her head in response and started staring at her blade.

The longest silence since they had met proceeded while the two of them ate and cooked off the last of the meat, storing some in sacs for later. They slept until the sun rose the next day, and set off to continue their journey.


	3. Chapter 2B: Thresh's Acceptance

Meanwhile, a lot of mayhem had flared up back at the League. There was an intense amount of commotion and confusion pertaining to why two champions had just left the League without a trace. The Institute stated that they were investigating the cause, but no further information was available at the time. People started to question how this could happen in such a high security place, and question the Leagues power and authority in general. The League had seemed to be taking a few steps, but for the most part they were allowing freak shows and creeps into the League. Some thought that it was to divert attention from the issue at hand, and some thought that the League used these new "Champions" for their own purposes rather than just to compete on the Fields of Justice.

While there were always some champions in the League in which fellow champions and summoners alike would question their acceptance, none of the most recent additions stood as being as controversial as the day that Thresh joined the League. Any Summoner watching or participating in the first match in which Thresh was summoned, remember it vividly.

Thresh came from the Shadow Isles, as far as anyone knew. He wears a long cloak that drags along the ground behind him. He walks in such a manner that made him appear to be at a casual stroll, no matter how fast he truly was traveling. He carries two items with him, one being a hook and the other a lantern. Both are tethered to him, and appeared to come from his back, vanishing into a hole in the back of his cloak. The tethers are referred to as chains, emanating a spectral glow. Some people say that the chains are not even chains at all, but bones of the people he has killed. Thresh's entire body is covered by clothing or hidden in his cloak, except for his head. He opts to have his hood drawn down, and has no neck in which is sits around. His head is no more than a skull, being supported by a spectral fire, creating a greenish-blue glow around his skull no matter the time of day. His appearance alone was one to set nightmares into an individual's sleep.

The match started off at a decently slow pace, in which the champion Draven was also summoned and chosen to protect the bottom lanes tower alongside Thresh. Draven himself was somewhat of an oddity. He was known as the Glorious Executioner. The man came to fame from executing prisoners of Noxus sentenced to death. Now, it wasn't the sheer number of executions or his precision in performing them that got him his name, while either factor alone would be more than enough, it was the manner in which he preformed the executions. Almost always, Draven would allow the prison one last "chance" at redemption. He would remove their hood and tell them to run. He would point to the exit and tell them they had one last chance to survive. Draven would perform his executions in front a large audience and it eventually escalated to the point in which he had his own stage amidst a coliseum in which he would hold his performances. Because of this, the path to escape would seem impossible. But when given the chance, most men would try. Never once did one escape. Draven would always catch up, running on seemingly impossible speeds fueled by nothing more than pure adrenaline in his own excitement and the roar of the crowd around him. Equipped with his spinning axe like blades, Draven would throw them at escaping prisoners. The blades would cut deep into their backs, leaving trails of blood behind them as they continued to run, if they were capable of doing so at that point. The manner in which Draven would spin his axes prior to throwing them would ensure that they always managed to ricochet off of their backs. He would then run out to catch them, simply to throw it again and again. Often times he would find himself doing tricks and jumps between each toss, throwing them over his shoulder, under his leg, or however he saw fit. Most of the time the prisoner had been dead long before his third axe had been thrown… or fortieth. He would throw his axes horizontally, to trip them as they ran, and on occasion he would allow the prisoner to almost reach the exit, having waited for minutes at this point, receiving boos of hatred from his crowd, being quite convinced he had ruined their show. But at the last minute he would wind up both of his axes and throw them along the ground, watching them cut through the soil in such a perfect manner that it would appear the two were merely wheels connected by an axel. If the axes somehow managed to miss the fleeing prisoner, intentionally or not, he would use his control of mana to reverse the direction of these whirling blades of death, and cut them down on their return path. But even a psychopath like this man was nothing in comparison to the monster Thresh revealed himself to be.

Part way through the match, there was a large fight in which every member of both teams participated. At one point a champion named Miss Fortune was fleeing the fight, making her way towards the base. Thresh noticed this and decided he did not approve of her escaping death while so heavily wounded already. He took chase of the woman, leaving his team and the current battle behind, but noticed he was not fast enough to do anything about it.

"Get meee… clossserr…" He told his summoner. The summoner who was in charge of watching over Thresh muttered a spell and in an instant, Thresh vanished from his current location and reappeared about 50 yards from his original location. Thresh grinned, presumably, seeing as his face is purely skeletal with a fire burning around it. He firmly grasped the hook in his right hand, and began twirling it in a circle, the tip of the hook searing the tips of the blades of grass on ground below, knocking another chuck off of it with each rotation. He only spun it around once or twice, but the manner in which he did so made it seem to be a lifetime. Miss Fortune looked back over her shoulder to see what was heading her way, but it was too late to do anything about it. Thresh released his hook and threw It towards her, leaning forward on his throw as if he had just pitched a baseball at 90 miles an hour. And honestly, it did just that. The hook whistled through the air with its chain snaking in a manner reminiscent of a Chinese dragon kite in the wind. The hook made contact with her back, and coiled down her body, creating a vortex of chain around the helpless woman. Thresh grasped his end of the chain at this point, tightening it with a sharp tug. Thresh laughed wildly as he turned and began dragging her along with him. After a few of the worlds longest seconds Miss Fortune had begun to wrestle free of the chain coffin, much to Thresh's displeasure. He turned back to face her, and leapt through the air. The chain retracted into his back as he flew, and led him straight to her location, and the hook straight back into Thresh's hand. Seeing she was free from Thresh's entanglement, she scampered back to her feet and began to run. But Thresh had many other tricks up his sleeve. He took his hook in hand let it slide down to the floor, gripping the chain connecting it, then proceeded to drag it along the ground this time. He started it behind him, and in a pendulum like motion he moved it forward, latching onto her feet. Thresh pulled the chain back and retracted the hook back to his hand, watching her fall face first to the upturned soil beneath her. She tried to scramble back to her feet again but this time she couldn't get up. The soil has been coated in ghostly plasma, making movement almost impossible while standing atop it. Face first in the ground, just in front of Thresh, all she could do was endure what was to come. Thresh let out a psychotic laugh and proceeded to thrashing his chains against her back. The wounds appeared with a spectral luminescence about them, inflicting continual pain into the open gashes on her back. Again and again Thresh lashed out at her backside, like a slaver with a whip, cracking at her flesh with his chain, but making sure never to go near the neck or back of the skull, where a lethal blow could have been placed a long time ago. The summoners on Thresh's team looked at each other, all with faces of shock and horror. Finally one of them shouted at the one controlling Thresh.

"Well do something! Tell him to finish her!" He shouted in a shaky voice. The summoner in control of Thresh snapped back into reality like someone had just punched him in the face.

"Thresh, finish her off." He demanded.

"AHAHAHA HAAHA HAHAA! You want her dead now, do yooou? Here, come on over and playyy…" Thresh's voiced echoed amongst itself, leaving a chill in the spines of anyone who could hear it. As Thresh finished his sentence, he threw out his lantern to a location about 75 yards behind him. One of the summoners on Thresh's team ordered Draven to go to the lanterns location. Draven approached the lantern and was surrounded by a bubble, clear with a slight green glow around it. The bubble suspended Draven into the air, and from inside it he could hear nothing, and feel nothing. Not even the wind blew through to the inside. It was a strange feeling, almost as if he was protected, but he was at the whim of Thresh's demented mind. Thresh tugged on the chain connecting him to the lantern, and the bubble moved towards him, lantern, Draven, and the bubble containing them. Draven arrived at Thresh's location and saw what had befallen Miss Fortune. As Draven stared, Thresh continued to lash out at her backside, inflicting more and more wounds, covering almost every inch of the back of her body. Draven quickly snapped to his senses and threw one axe into the back of her skull. Not even Draven had the strength to finish her in a performance like manner after seeing her in as much pain as she was. He couldn't even muster the strength to laugh or taunt the sky about how good he was. Miss Fortune's body hit the ground with a thud, having been held a foot or so off of the ground be her out stretched arms, but not before she let out a blood curdling scream. The scream was of such despair that the summoners not watching over Thresh shuddered. But Thresh himself laughed, yet again. But this time more loudly than before, almost as if he had just become empowered to hear her scream in death. Most believe that seeing people die literally does give his power, like he is fueling himself with their very souls.

This became very common practice for Thresh. Rarely would he finish off a champion on his own. This act made him commonly taken on a team for being supportive of the others by allowing them to receive the gold for finishing off a champion in combat. No one wanted to have to go against the demon on the battlefield. So very often his name would show up before a match as a champion banned from being summoned. However, allowing for him to spend more time around the institute of war than on the battlefield was not a very pleasurable option. Upon questioning as to why such a disgustingly heartless monstrosity would ever be allowed into the League, they were answered with a question.

"Would you want him on the streets instead of in here?"

In addition to the lack of a proper response, the… "man" was seen patrolling the perimeter of the Institute, twirling his chain and lantern as he strode. This behavior was ignored with the excuse that he is happiest as a jailer, as he was in his previous life, and is allowed to do as he pleases around the Institute so long as it remains within the realms of the Summoners Code, and walking around a perimeter was not an action of disturbance or problematic to them.


	4. Chapter 2C: Talon's Hospitalization

Talon awoke face down in a rather uncomfortable pillow. He slowly opened his eyes and attempted to take in his surroundings as best as possible. The room he was in was excruciatingly dark, so dark that he was amazed anyone without eyesight of an assassin like himself could even manage to see their own hands in such a dark space. He was unfamiliar with his location, which was an unfamiliar feeling in itself, having been across the entire continent of Valoran and back in order to end the lives of whatever target he had been assigned to. He attempted to roll over, hoping his pillow was more comfortable on the back of his head than it was on his face, but was stopped not only by the rope tying down his hands and feet, but by the searing pain his back, burning as if someone had taken a chunk of his muscle away and forced him to move. Suddenly memories flooded back into his head of everything that had happened leading up to this point, but not a single one of them was any clearer than the sewage water he had grown up in. He closed his eyes and tried to think of all of the events immediately prior to him being tied up in the room he was currently in. He let his mind slip from the current world of reality and back to what he remembered occurring some time ago…

Talon was walking through the halls of the Institute of war and decided to make a quick stop by Katarina's room. Her father had been missing for quite awhile now and he made sure to check up on her from time to time. He worked alone on his assassination missions as often as possible, but he learned his skill with a blade from the same man that she did, Marcus Du Couteau, her father. General Du Couteau was the only man to ever defeat Talon in a duel, and spared his life in return for his loyalty to the General's cause. The man had mysteriously disappeared some time ago, without a trace. Talon no longer had orders to follow or a debt to repay, he could be a free man… but something kept him around, looking for Marc us. His disappearance was the main reason that Talon had joined the League in the first place. Part of him felt that his loyalty should be passed on to the man's daughter, Katarina, being of the same house and name. Talon had grown quite fond of the woman in his time serving under Marcus, a feeling he had not felt for an individual other than Marcus himself outside of a boy named Kavyn, who he left face down in the gutter after realizing how much more success he had in life working alone. He had refused to grow connected to any person in any way since then, knowing how it would turn out in the end. And to be fair, he really didn't need more corpses pilling up in the streets, it would cost more money to continually re-sharpen his blades.

He approached the room where Katarina stayed and knocked a few times. To Talon's surprise, there was no response. He turned the knob and found it to be unlocked. He entered the room with an announced hello and scanned the surroundings. It appeared to be completely empty, the lights turned off with no one in the bed or on the furniture. The place was not ransacked at all and knowing Katarina, if someone were to kidnap her, the room would have made it quite obvious that she did not go willingly. He quickly left the room and latched the door with a feeling sinking in his gut as his conscious grew aware of her potential whereabouts. He took flight down the halls of the Institute of war, headed straight for the quietest, most isolated portion of it. As he drew nearer to his destination, he began to hear soft sounds of metal clashing against metal. He rolled his eyes as he approached a room made of a bluish marble, connecting 4 hallways together, all of them leading to next to pointless and unused portions of the Institute.

Talon's memories were disrupted, snapping him back into the present, as the sound of footsteps corroded his thoughts. He opened his eyes again and made out the figure of a large man, suffering from an incredible hunched back and leg gimp, hobbling into the room holding a shovel in his hand while holding his lantern via a jagged stick that appeared to be jankily attached to his back and hung over his head, reminiscent of an anglerfish's light. The man was quite an awful sight on the eyes, not to mention entering his line of vision in a moment like this. He knew who he was, but had no idea why he was looking at him, or where he could possibly be that would provide this man as his company for the moment. Talon racked his scrambled brains for a moment to collect all of the information on the hulking man as he could before coming to the conclusion that he knew very little. His name was Yorick, and he was… or is rather, a grave digger. He came from the Shadow Isles and was no longer totally a part of the living.

"Warmskin" the man said allowed, most likely referring to Talon.

"You will untie me and show me the way out before I cut myself free, slit your ghastly appendage you refer to as a neck, and find my out using your rotten blood as a retracing line" Talon immediately demanded. Yorick laughed a horrid cry before responding to his less than appreciative guest.

"I will let you try warmskin. But there are many flaws in your simplistic plan. If you could have cut yourself free, you would have long ago. If I could be killed, I would have done so long ago. If I had blood for you to pool, it would have been spilt long ago. So, do you still wish to create empty threats, or will you let your pointless personality be set aside while I assist you to proper health?" Talon snared at the gravediggers response and closed his eyes to shield his brain from having to look at the dark silhouette of the horridly disfigured man in front of him. He should have known that a man who has avoided death for as many centuries as he would have accumulated enough knowledge to not be moved by such a simple threat. He had made it out of situations before where words had gotten him free. The will to survive is much stronger in one who depends upon only himself to do so than it is in one who relies on others to consistently grant them bail. Yorick proceeded to remove the current wrappings on Talon's back, pour some sort of chemical over it that, to Talon's amazement, sent more of a chill done his spine than create any sort of burning sensation, and rewrap his wound. Talon allowed him to do his work unquestioned, not caring how or why he was in the situation he was in or why this abomination was aiding him; more so annoyed that he was in it. Being unable to do anything about his predicament, he allowed his memories to override his brain once again, remembering the last time he had when his words had allowed him to escape…

Talon lifted his head up off of the table, coughing and sputtering a bloody mess of wood splints, dirt and saliva. He scanned the room without moving an inch. His eyes weren't even rotating in his sockets; he was just taking in the image with his peripherals. He saw a relatively empty room, a table lying against the opposite side of his face, and shadowy figures standing on the opposite side of the room from him. He noticed something odd, being placed upon a table: his vision was of the figures feet, not their torsos. He examined a bit more and saw legs of the table smashed apart and lying around the table. It had collapsed, likely from his body having been tossed on top of it. He didn't remember getting there, so he examined the table more closely. A small dent was visible in the surface, as if a knife had been standing in it at one point in time. He recognized it as his table; the dent was where he generally held his blade, allowing it to stand in the air to retain the blades shine as best as possible. The blade was not standing the dent though. He looked more intently at the two figures standing on the other side of the room which he now recognized as his own. One was on the ground, being held at blade point. The other was a large man, holding the blade to their neck. The blade was Talon's, swiped up from the table. He had no way to assault this assailant without his weapon. He recognized the one on the ground to be a woman, but he was familiar with the man's voice. The world quickly shifted into reality as his brain let all the pieces fall into place and finish the picture. He had been tossed onto the table while sleeping, knocking him out, or so the assailant thought. His blade has been stolen and was now being used against the woman who had entered the room in concern for the loud crash caused from Talon slamming into and collapsing the table. Clearly the man had thought the table to be of a stronger integrity, but he seemed to be coping with his error quite well. Talon was trying to think of who would hate him, or the Du Coutaeu's so much to attempt to assassinate them and not assume he would pay for the deed with his life. Katarina sat very still, her face lightly bloodied from a fight with the assassin, not daring to move a muscle. Talon quickly racked his brains to get an answer to his question. He had no chance of arriving at the man in time to save her, and less of a chance of fending him off without a proper weapon. He had to use his words, but he had no idea who he was or what he could say to him. But to be fair, it could be anyone looking for vengeance, due to the mass amount of corpses he has laid to across the streets and gutters of Noxus. Regardless, he had to act. He lifted his face from the table and got to his knees.

"Go ahead" He said to the armed man. "Kill her. See what happens. But just you remember something". The man tilted his head to the side, looking out of the side of his eye to see Talon sitting in the corner of the room.

"Oh I'll kill her alright, then I'll finish you off you cocky little crap. I'll cut her to pieces right in front of you, then I'll kill you on top of her body…" He scoffed at Talon. Talon rolled his eyes.

"Do you know who that woman is?" He asked. "She is an assassin of Noxus. She serves under General Du Coutaeu. She is a mere pawn. You strike her down, and everyone you know, everyone you love, everything you dreamt of, will be cut down with its ashes scattered all over you face when they're done. Every living moment of your life will be of waking torment and despair until the point in which you die, hardly a soul left in your body. So please, cut her down. The door is right there." He said while motioning to the exit to his immediate right. "In the time you waste to finish her off, I'll being out of here informing every watchful eye we have posted around the entire country of Noxus. So tell me, how fast do you think you can run?" The man took deep consideration of Talon's words, trying to decide whether or not they were truthful, and honestly they were; Marcus loved his daughter more than anything else in the world and would halt at nothing to torture the very existence of the man who ended her life. Talon looked at Katarina half slumped against the wall with a hand around her neck. He nodded at her, and she got the message. The man's grip had loosened in his distraction, and his armed hand was shaking slightly as he began to understand the situation he had gotten himself into. She moved swiftly, grabbing the arm holding the blade and thrusting it into the arm holding her neck. He screamed in pain and immediately let go of her altogether. Talon ran towards him in a dead sprint and launched onto him. He wrenched the blade out of his flesh and reinserted it into his neck. He coughed and sputtered, blood oozing from the side of his neck and his mouth. Talon laid his limp body on the ground and kicked him in the ribs to knock out what little air was left in his lungs, grasping feebly onto life. He looked over at Katarina, who sat there silently, lightly wounded and very winded, but recoverable. He offered his hand down and helped her up. He walked with her arm wrapped around his shoulder, helping her limp out of the room and down the hallway towards Marcus' room. It was the first time he recalled helping someone out. While he had done it out of his own self accord, he had helped her nevertheless. He had respect for her being Marcus' daughter, but he did not expect to have to save her from such a dire situation. Although, had she not shown up at Talon's room when she had, he may have been dead already. It was a peculiar feeling to have someone care for you for something other than your skill with a blade. What did it mean? He shook his head. Nothing. It meant nothing. The girl simply entered the room out of curiosity from having heard a loud noise. Then things fell into place. He looked up at the hallway he walked down. He had never recalled these halls to be of such incredible length.

He sighed and continued walking as the darkness slowly enclosed upon itself, as Talon's consciousness slipped away into a deeper state of sleep, bringing the memory to a close.


	5. Chapter 2D: Ezreal Embarks

A young man, slightly over 20, bearing a small frame with slender figure, stood in a hallway in the Institute of War looking a tad uneasy. He wore his fluffy blonde hair at a little above shoulder height and his clothes were tight against his body from the small leather belts on his lower arms and legs; they were worn with the intention of keeping loose ends from getting snared on obstacles. He was an explorer in his time outside of being a champion in the League, and his appearance reflected it. He wore goggles, boots, and gloves, but his gloves did not match: one glowed a soft yellow due to the gem implanted in center. He had found it on an expedition some time ago and joined the League shortly after discovering how to wield the power inside of it.

He gazed deeply into the stones luminescence as he held his hand up to the door in front of him, preparing to knock. Without moving his eyes, he shifted his focus from his glove to the plaque hanging on the door. The light glow fit excruciatingly well with the name on the plaque. It was only three letters long; while her full name was much longer, she preferred to be called by "Lux". She was a very talented young lady; she was only 17, just few years younger than he was and already had years of military experience under her belt, leading to her being recruited into the League of Legends. Her incredible talent at controlling light through her magical strength was unparalleled by any other individual throughout Valoran. Her parents had taken note of this talent and sent her off to serve her country while she was still very young. Her whole family partook in the Demacian military, and her older brother, Garen, even fought on the fields of Justice as well; up until just recently. Garen was actually what brought the man to Lux's room today. He had vanished from the League awhile ago, along with another champion by the name of Talon. The only relationship between them is that they are from rivaling countries: Talon is Noxian while Garen is Demacian. Their disappearance was all that anyone was talking about but no one had any facts. His natural curiosity that drove his explorative personality led him to try to figure out exactly what was going on.

He looked to his left and right, inspecting the completely barren hallway.

"No one in sight" he said to himself in a whisper. His voice suited his appearance: it was light but very clear and defined. Not so high pitched that it could be mistaken for belonging to a female but not deep enough to be taken seriously if it were to give a command. He proceeded to knock on the door a few times and waited for an answer. A moment later, the door opened and a young woman appeared in its entrance. She was about his height, presumably five and half feet tall or so, with blonde hair just a few shades lighter than his. She was built quite similarly, however a slender figure on a small frame was expected of a teenage girl. She smiled at him as soon as she had opened the door, her face absolutely beaming. It was almost as if light itself shone from her cheeks. He returned the smile and motioned as if asking to enter.

"Do you mind if I come in Lux?" He asked politely. "I apologize for the stopping by so late, but I had a couple questions and wanted to come see you". The two hung out from time to time, often getting him laughed at for their similarities in appearance. And due to Lux's military background, people often joked that he was the more feminine of the two. He would shake such harassment aside, being happy to spend time with the girl.

"No not at all Ezreal!" She replied with a smile. It seemed almost as if she had wanted him to come by sometime soon. He walked into the room and she closed the door behind him. He had never actually stepped into the room before; just said his goodbyes as he dropped her off at the room after hanging out with her later into the evenings on some nights.

The room was well decorated with the Demacian colors of white, yellow, and blue with banners draping from the walls. High quality olden style architecture was implemented in the furniture and structure of the room, reminiscent of what you would see in Demacia's streets. The room was built for a princess, just as many rooms in the Institute were. Champions were allowed to decorate their rooms however they'd like to ensure that they feel comfortable and capable of maintaining a high morale. Some rumors even said the Dr. Mundo's room, a psychotic madman from Zaun, kept it littered with corpses and cadavers from his "medical experiments". This was one rumor Ezreal had not bothered to pursue.

The room was amazingly tidy compared to his own: he had his cluttered with desks and shelves packed full with books , artifacts, notes and journals entries, while the floor itself was rarely visible through the mass quantity of items that had fallen to the floor and never been bothered to be picked up. He didn't even have a bed in his room since most of the time he fell asleep at his desk or somewhere on the floor when he collapsed from exhaustion. His mind was constantly running and turning, creating ideas and theories to be tested or trying to discover lost secrets and treasures. He was almost taken aback by how much of Lux's room was encompassed by her bed. Clearly she viewed sleep in a much different manner than he did.

She crossed the room and sat down on the bed, motioning for Ezreal to come over too. He sat down next to her, facing the door to the room. She giggled and shifted sideways, bringing her legs up onto the bed, sitting cross-legged.

"How do you plan to have a conversation with someone while facing a door?" She asked, intentionally trying to embarrass him for his half minded actions. It worked, making him blush lightly as he shifted his body to face the girl, mimicking her position. "What was it that you wanted to talk about Ezreal?" She questioned.

"Well uh, I was wondering if you knew anything about the disappearance of your brother" he said. Her face's glow seemed to evaporate as she lowered her head, allowing her long hair to fall forward, covering her face.

"Oh" she said, her voice much darker than it had been previously while greeting Ezreal.

"Not that I don't enjoy talking with you or anything! I just wanted to know if you knew something or anything". He spoke with a slight stutter of nervousness. He was very comfortable with talking to Lux, but when it came to talking about personal things, he was always on edge; afraid that he would slip up and embarrass himself or hurt their feelings. She seemed to lighten up, amused by his obvious discomfort. She placed a soothing hand on his leg and gave him a smile.

"Go ahead Ez, it's ok. What do you want to know?" She said. He seemed to loosen up a bit himself, seeing how she wasn't as stressed about the topic as Ezreal had originally thought. He straightened himself up and looked into her eyes after she lifted her head from her slump.

"I wanted know if you had any idea where Garen has gone. I've heard over a thousand rumors but I doubt any of them were in any way accurate. I guess it's partly my curiosity getting the best of me, partly me being concerned for Garen and the League, and partly me being concerned for you and your well being. Did he say anything to you? Leave you and clues or display any sort of suspicious behavior before her left?" Lux looked everywhere but at Ezreal. She knew her answer, but did not know whether or not she wanted to confide her information in him. She finally looked back into Ezreal's eyes and nodded.

"Hold up" She announced to him. She stood up from the bed and locked her door. She walked over to a large dresser and shifted around for a few moments. She pulled out a small folded piece of paper and re-approached Ezreal. She held the paper in her hands for a few moments before deciding to turn it over to the man sitting on her bed. He took it in hand lightly and slowly unfolded the note. To his surprise, there was only one word on the note. It read "West". He was awfully puzzled and it was quite apparent because Lux spoke up.

"I'm not sure exactly what it means, but it is all that he left for me. I gave it to the Demacian officials who were looking for information on him as well. They didn't bother confiscating the evidence because they could hardly prove that it came from Garen. I know it did though, in case you were wondering. It is his handwriting. I know I don't get to see it much, but I know it well enough to recognize it as his. But as you probably know, Demacia itself is to the west of here. He did not return to Demacia. He has no reason to; he can contact anyone he wants to whenever he needs to. The note…" She paused, debating whether or not she should tell Ezreal what she thought. He gave her great smile in attempt to persuade her and as a simple gesture to suggest that he was not sent here but was acting on his own accord. Her information was safe with him. She leaned in closer and continued. "The note is a lie" She said to him. Ezreal was confused but didn't bother to intervene. "Garen set this up. He doesn't want to be found. He knew that I would be sought after as soon as he went missing, so he placed this note in my possession for a reason. He wanted someone to look at this and think it was a very vague way to suggest that he was heading towards Demacia. This concept has both put the League on ease, assuming he has some sort of emergency at home to deal with, and put Demacia on the lookout for his arrival. But he is smarter than that. He doesn't want to be found. He headed elsewhere. And if he assumed so much as to know that I would have figured this all out, the note would also contain information pertaining to his actual whereabouts. So what's the most logical?" She asked Ezreal half rhetorically. He assumed that she wanted him to answer, just as a small test of his intelligence. He thought briefly before he spoke up.

"Well, seeing as the note itself is supposed to lead searchers astray, it could be safely assumed that he is going the exact opposite way: east". She nodded in approval.

"Precisely Ez. You know what that means though right?" She asked in a similar manner as before.

"Noxus…" He replied dully. He didn't want to have to answer the way he did but it was the truth. She nodded, looking a little shaken up yet again. "This… This isn't good…"

"No, it's not good" She agreed. "But, I don't know what to do. I think the true answer is nothing at all. I want to go look for him but I have no reason to. He can take care of himself and whatever deranged sense of justice or vengeance has persuaded him to venture into the heart of his country's biggest rival is clearly much stronger than the whims of safety coming from his little sister. So I just have to accept it for what it is, and pray that he is ok". Ezreal looked at her but her head was down again, looking at her folded hands in her lap. He knew that he wasn't going to provide any decent amount of comfort for the girl at the moment so he decided to wait it out. He did not have any siblings, nor did he spend any time around one person long enough to become so attached as to care for them if they were to disappear; except for maybe Lux. He looked around the room again as if there was something lying inside of it that he would be able to use to provide her with comfort. He looked over at the window and its arching frame, screaming with beautiful Demacian architecture. He saw a bird fly away from its perch on the other side of the glass and into the dark night sky. He watched it fly for quite some time until the soft blue glow of the moon reflecting off of its feathers did not provide enough light to make it visible any longer. He turned back towards Lux and placed a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him, her face bearing a forced smile.

"I'll find out what has happened Lux. He may be more sane than you have presumed. You may be wrong and he isn't in Noxus at all. The world is a mystery, and it just takes enough searching and dedication to figure it out. I'll figure this out. Thank you for the lead Lux, I'm sure it will be plenty more than enough to get this started" he stated. Her forced smile gradually turned into a real one and she reached out to hug him.

"Thank you Ez" She said. Ezreal was so flustered by the motion than he awkwardly took the hug and stood up, preparing to leave the room.

"Erm, you're welcome Lux" he said before walking towards the door. Before he made it out Lux called to him one last time.

"Another thing to keep in mind" she started, "Talon is missing as well. And he is most likely heading towards Noxus. I dunno why or how the two may link up, but Talon is Noxian" Ezreal nodded to motion that he acknowledged the information, and turned to leave the room. He walked out and latched the door quietly behind him. He began down the hallway, thoughts ablaze with ideas and philosophies, trying to figure out where to go next with his information.

"I will figure this out Lux, don't you worry" He muttered to himself.

Lux sat on her bed staring at the door where the prodigal explorer had just left her room. "All the brains in the world but he doesn't even think to say good night" she said to herself. She laughed lightly at the thought and lay back on her bed. Her mind was more so at rest than it had been in an awful long time. Somehow, she knew Ezreal was going to help her out. The man had the dedication of a bull, even if his appearance reflected the opposite.


	6. Chapter 3A: Garen's Encounter

When Garen and Riven woke up, they continued along their original path to try to get Garen a new sword. They walked for awhile, not having a whole lot to say to each other, other than an occasional note to not trip on a large boulder in the path, to listen for wild animals, or a simple thank you for holding a branch out of the way. They seemed to both be fairly well coordinated in their hike, walking without stumbling or bumping into one another. While both were a part of their own exile, neither was very accustomed to traveling on their own having spent so long in an army. Not often were soldiers selected for individual work because it would often lead to freelancers and rouges if they were allowed to obtain enough information or be given enough power. It was hard to get a unit to remain loyal to its country or military when there are so many other factors to take over someone's conscience. However, seeing ally units doing the same thing as you, day in and day out, a lot of that type of stress is removed due to the environments created sociological stability.

They came to the edge of the forest and the terrain quickly shifted. One moment they were walking through trees and foliage, the next they strode along a dry ground with many large rocky structures surrounding them. Riven continued to lead the way, pausing every so often to take another chance to scan the surroundings. She clearly hadn't been out of the forest in quite some time, but her memories dug into her so deeply that she wasn't going to be able to completely forget what she was looking for.

Garen continued to follow her and allowed his thoughts to wander. He thought back to Lux and the note that he had left her. He wondered whether or not she would know exactly what to make of it. He had travel quite a bit in the time since he had left the League and did not know where all he would end up. Currently he trudged along the wastelandish grounds of Ionia; east of the League, just as he hinted at in his note, but also across the ocean. He hoped she didn't assume that he was in Noxus and send a search part for him. He knew Lux to be smart enough not to attempt to create an upheaval based upon a thought or idea. She would think it through thoroughly before even attempting to mention it to someone. There was a young champion in the League by the name of Ezreal who shared the characteristic of deep thought and an exploratory nature with her. The two spent a decent amount of time together, sharing ideas and concepts; it was impossible to get their attention through any means outside of one of them being summoned. He grinned at the thought. He had remembered having to take that into consideration before he left. Had he not prevented it, he could have very easily been found just by simply being summoned onto the Fields of Justice. He was glad that he had made it to Ionia, being far enough away that it was unlikely to see anyone who would find him. None of the Ionian champions bothered to live in Ionia anymore, being so far away. They all just reside at the rooms granted to them inside of the Institute of War. The island continent was a perfect place to remain for the time being.

Riven finally came upon what she had been looking for: on the ground lay a moderately sized rock with fragments of metal scattered all around it. There was a massive chunk missing from the rock and it emitted a glow, almost as if a soul remained around the rock, having been released from the metal during its impact with the rock but unwilling to go anywhere else on its own. Riven walked around and collected the largest parts of the shattered sword and held them under her free arm. The pieces glowed a light green with letters inscribed into them doing the same thing. The metal itself was a shiny silvery color, lightly stained with blood of its fallen enemies.

"We will need a forge" Riven said to Garen. "Heat, a hammer of some sort, and a place to press the metal". The man nodded.

"We can go back into the forest and find an old stump and wet it. It's unlikely to catch fire while wet and the sword would be finished long before it had melted to the ground from the heat of the sword" He replied.

"Hopefully the remnants of my blade are enough to press the pieces into a new sword".

"I'm sure it will suffice" He told her reassuringly. He knew that they needed some very hot flames and that an open pit fire would not be enough to create them. The two thought about it for some time. Garen started to walk around the area in search of something they could use. "Maybe we ought to just take the metal to a place where we know we can use a forge. Is there a town around? Do you have any idea?"

"No idea" She replied while shaking her head. "I'm not very familiar with much outside of that forest and this area that we are in now". Garen nodded to say that he understood. He walked back towards Riven, still holding the pieces of her fragmented sword in her hand. He gently took the pieces from her and slid the down his back; in between his shirt and coat. He pulled his coat strings tight to make sure that they were secured.

"We ought to go look then" He told her. He held his hand down to help her up since she had been sitting down pondering their options. "I'm thinking forging a sword with a broken blade and a wet tree stump is not as reliable as it may seem to be at first thought." Hearing himself say it out loud, it did sound like a ridiculous idea. He helped her to her feet and they were about to begin wandering to find a town not in ruins from the Noxian invasion and to find a usable forge when a shadowy figure stood in their path. It was quite peculiar, seeing as it was midday, to see a shadowy figure standing in the open. He rubbed his eyes as if they were deceiving him.

"LOOK OUT!" Riven yelled as a shuriken came flying in his direction. He rolled sideways and stood up to see the blackened outline of a man standing in front of him still. How had he managed to stay in front of him during his roll while throwing a shuriken, Garen thought to himself. He didn't need time to ponder this any further because the figure shifted, without walking or even moving his feet, to place himself directly in front of Garen. He immediately punched the man in the jaw, just to watch his fist phase through him as if he was punching an illusion. However, Riven had seen it too, so it couldn't be a figment of his imagination. The shadow laughed at him in a dull monotone voice before thrust its arm at Garen. It wore a blade extending from the lower portion of its arm, allowing it to be wielded like a weapon but keep its hands free, reminiscent of a tool an assassin would use. He had seen this style once before, and it was Talon who fought with it. But this figure was much larger than Talon, and had no expression or features. It was literally a shadow.

The blade cut the side of Garen's arm as he shifted to keep it from penetrating his ribcage. This was exactly what he had feared; the shadow couldn't be harmed but was capable of injuring him. Perhaps it could choose when to be tangible and when not to be, he thought. Garen went off of this idea and thrust forward in a football players stance, preparing to either knock the figure down or run straight through it. At first the shadow attempted to use this opportunity to throw Garen to the ground, but quickly realized that it was losing the wrestling match. It gave in right before it was about to lose balance and allowed Garen to sprint straight through it. By this point in time Riven had managed to come to his side to help him with the spectral opponent. The two stood side by side looking at the figure before them, both at a complete loss for words to describe it. The shadow did not hesitate as it shifted to stand besides Garen in a teleporting like fashion. He stood guard, preparing for it to attack. The figured thrust its bladed arm towards his gut and Garen grabbed a hold of its arm, holding it way from his flesh. Riven grabbed the back of Garen shoulders and vaulted herself over him as if she were playing leap frog, and landed on with one foot on Garen's arm and the other on the shadow's. She took her blade and swung wildly at the shadow. At first it ducked and shifted in attempt to dodge, but started taking the hits as the warrior held his arm hostage by standing on it. Garen flexed his arm to provide proper support for his ally as she stood suspended in air by their arms, Garen's still clenching the shadow's with every ounce of might he had in his body, desperately pleading that it backed off before it's blade sank into Garen's torso. Clearly annoyed by the inability to progress its blade and the shots to face it was taking by the wild woman; he sank into the floor, creating a shadowy pool, just as a shadow should be. Riven almost lost her balance as one of her footholds disappeared beneath her and she hopped back down to the ground. Garen held his hand out to Riven, asking for the sword. She handed it to him and he closed his eyes. He turned the blade upside down and held it in both of his hands. He stood like this for a moment, then crouched down to the ground and thrust the blade into the ground. A moment later, a larger projection of Riven's blade appeared in midair above the shadow as it began emerging from the pool to retake its humanoid form it had used to battle. Garen's stance resembled a knight bowing before his king, one shin flat along the ground, bent at the knee, with the other leg's foot to the ground, bent at the knee right next to the sword stuck into the dirt. His arm rested upon the knee, with the hand on the hilt of the blade and his head bowed to touch his forehead to the back of his hand. The large projection fell like a meteor into the shadow's skull, splitting the figure in two, vertically. It screamed a resonating sound of pain as it slump into pieces, littering the ground with black specks. Garen stood up, and handed the sword back to Riven. She took it from him, mouth agape from what she had just seen. Garen couldn't help but grin. He keeps forgetting that she has never seen him in combat before, just heard stories of his battles. But now was not the time to hesitate and explain.

"This place is not safe. We must go" Garen said to her after she had regained herself. She nodded in agreement and they set off back towards the forest. "We need to get off of this island. I came here to be isolated and at peace but clearly I have been found; and by a party that I do not fell is very fond of me. Do you wish to travel with me or will you stay here?" He asked Riven. She was silent for a spell as she thought but after a few minutes she finally spoke up.

"I would be delighted to travel with you Garen. I have no home, no family, no army, no duty… I really don't have a whole lot to live for at the moment. But perhaps traveling for you will let me find something... or a cause". He smiled at her as they walked through the forest.

"I'm sure you will at least find some adventure" He reassured her.

"Oh, I was meaning to ask you something. How did you even get here? The League is on the other side of the ocean. You couldn't have just walked here, as you had said initially".

"You're right Riven, I had to take a ship. A friend lent it to me".

"You can sail?" She asked him, doubtfully.

"More or less" He replied, obviously leaving out some details. The two walked with some slight conversation back and forth until they arrived at the edge of the forest, where it met with the ocean's waters. There was a small boat docked along the shore, big enough for two or three people. It had a sail and oars propped against it.

"You took THAT? All the way from the continent!?" She seemed quite amazed.

"You would be surprised at a man's dedication to a cause" He told her. He unloaded the sacks of meat they had left over from last night and hopped into the boat. She hesitated and climbed in with him. He took the oars and thrust the small ship into the ocean's waters. He licked his finger and held it to the wind to determine its direction. "Perfect. It's blowing west right now. We can get back to the mainland in no time".

"Um, what exactly is no time to you, Garen?" She asked. Garen grinned and moved to the back of the boat. He opened a hatch and exposed a hextech motor concealed in the compartment. He pulled it out and fixated it to the rear of the boat with its propeller sitting in the water. He pushed a button on top and it purred as the propeller began to cut through the water, pushing the boat forward. The combination of rowing with the sail up and propeller in the water, the boat was moving forward at a very fast pace. He turned to Riven and grinned.

"No time, is no time at all" he replied. The boat cruised off into the ocean blue, leaving the Island of Ionia a small dot in the distance, as the continent of Valoran started to become much more prominent.


	7. Chapter 3B: Zed's Failure

Three figures stood visible inside of a dark room. Two of them were distinguishable as members of the high council; three summoners ran all of the actions of the League, calling themselves the Council of Equity; however the only one to show her face to the public was Vessaria Kolminye. She was not one of the two members standing in the chamber, lying deep inside of the Institute of War, its exact location unknown to the individual who was not a high council member. That person was a woman who stood about 5 and a half feet tall, with a small figure covered in leather armor. She wore a cape of blue feathers and walked with slight hunch, as if she was always on the verge of being assaulted. Her voice was that of an average woman in her early twenties being soft, but it was also lightly scratchy, reminiscent of someone in recovery of a sore throat.

The woman was on her way out of the room as another figure entered. There was a doorway to exit and enter from, but upon exiting the room, the woman found herself to be standing inside of her designated room at the Institute. She did not remember how he got into the dark chamber with the high councilors and swore she had just been teleported inside. She did, however, remember the conversation that went on inside of it. Although she did not know it, the information she had just confided in the council members was currently be handed over to the man who had just entered the chamber.

"We need you to carry out the task we had discussed previously, Zed" said one of the high council members to their new guest. The man grinned, although it was unnoticeable from behind his mask. He wore armor on vital, squishier areas of his body, but the rest of his skin was covered by red clothing. No part of his body was exposed, not even the back of his head. His tunic had a hood mended to it which covered whatever part of his head that the mask did not. He was armed, as always, with a blade extending from his gauntlets, allowing him to use his hands in combat in addition to his blades.

"Yes, I am ready" he stated while crossing the dark chamber towards the two high councilors in the room with him. "But as I said before, I need to know of his whereabouts. As much as I'd like to, I cannot just arrive where ever he is". There was a strange sound to his voice, almost as if he couldn't be bothered to put emotion into his voice, or that it had been stricken from him. But it wasn't quite monotone either; his voice seemed to resound at all times, possibly due to his metallic mask covering his face. He did have a slight feeling of happiness to his voice as he spoke of accepting his task. However, at most other times this slight joy was replaced by a slight anger. Perhaps these were the only two emotions that he has left.

"Yes, yes of course" the taller of the two councilors replied. "Our information has led us to the Island of Ionia. It took us some time. An initial lead pointed to Noxus. Luckily our intel was wise enough to keep searching based on her clues. He was in a forest last we knew, most likely with company, a woman wielding nothing more than a broken sword, but apparently he himself was completely unarmed. Can you handle him alone?"

"I could handle three unarmed fools alone" the man replied cockily.

"We have others at our disposal, Zed. You do not need to put yourself in harm's way in order to carry out such a simple task." The councilor spoke with unease in his voice. He clearly did not have as much confidence in Zed as he had in himself.

"I don't plan to" he said as he walked out of the room through the doorway. He reappeared inside of his private room inside of the Institute. He had been accepted as a champion just a short while ago, a little after Thresh. Some of the fellow champions and summoners of the League may have been concerned about the acceptance of a man armed and equipped to assassinate with ease while refusing to show his face and preferring to take comfort in shadowy corners and dark alleys, but not much was questioned after a being by the name of Thresh had been accepted a short while ago. So long as his ghastly figure patrolled the borders of the Institute in the time he spent outside of League matches, people did not bother to question much of what the League did, refusing to look for answers to something less drastic than his persistent presence. This was probably a good move on the League's part, not to mention the fact that no one dared go interview Thresh himself in order to get answers.

Zed kneeled down in the room and focused. Ionia was quite a distance away. His dull room was not in his vision anymore as he closed his eyes and began to bring a new view into focus.

The island of Ionia was quite peaceful, for the time being. A small shadow protruded a few feet from a stone sitting amidst a rocky desolate field. The shadow began to ripple, as if it were made out of water and a small pebble had fallen into the center of it. A head popped out of the shadow, slowly emerging further and further until an entire man stood atop the stones shadow. He looked almost like an exact replica of Zed, but it lacked any sort of color or detail, much as an actual shadow would. Zed was in control of the shadow, capable of seeing, hearing, feeling, and speaking through the shadow. He looked around the area in front of him, and spotted a forest off in the distance. He assumed it to be the forest mentioned to him, and progressed toward it. He walked straight through rocks and boulders, being made of nothing more than the lack of light until Zed sought it to be otherwise.

He continued walking in a straight line until he came across the edge of the forest; he saw two people exiting it just then. He pondered the idea of taking both of them out with one quick swoop and finding out if it was his target or not later. He realized that the sound of battle would frighten anybody within the perimeter, including his target if the pair walking out of the woods was not the one he was sent to kill, and decided it would be best to pursue them awhile to figure out who they were. He stuck to the shadows of the stones stretching far across the scorched earth in order to stay concealed. Zed allowed his shadow entity to stay submerged so as not to be detected. Shadows have a perk to them; they don't make a single sound as they move around. He stalked the two people as they wandered seemingly aimlessly about the barren plains. After some time of slipping from rock to rock, shadow to shadow, he came to a halt as they started arrived at a location where a scattered pieces of metal lay about, glowing a soft green color. He waited and listened as they discussed possibilities to forge a new weapon out of this newfound metal. It seemed as if their aimless hiking was actually a search for this specific spot so they could gather the metal fragments. After awhile they packed up the swords pieces and began to walk away. Zed determined from their conversation that they were quite likely the one he was looking for and his partner due to the description he had been given and the strange woman walking around with a broken sword. He was sent for Garen, the might of Demacia, somehow managing to flee the Institute of war, preventing himself from being summoned, and has been sentenced to death by the council for his actions. While his sentencing was decently under the table, Zed was more than happy to do the dirty work for the League while they took care of covering it up.

Zed had his shadow approach Garen as he walked away from his partner who was clearly lost in thought of something different. He conjured a shuriken out of his shadowy essence and propelled the razor sharp projectile straight at Garen's face. The man rolled sideways to avoid it and Zed shifted the shadow projection along the same path so that as soon as he stood back up he was still facing straight at him. Zed decided that he could throw shurikens all day and produce the same effect, so he shifted the projection to appear right in front of Garen. The man was still unarmed, while Zed had his weapons protruding from the gauntlets on his forearm. Garen threw his fist at Zed's projection to watch it phase through, just as an object attempting to touch a shadow should. Zed laughed at his attempt, amused by the petty mind of those unaware of the power held within the shadows. His laugh echoed out of the shadowy puppet, mirroring his voice. Zed had the shadow thrust its arm forward, aimed at Garen's ribcage, but he dodged the fatal blow, leaving a laceration in the side of his arm as Zed's shadow swung. Almost immediately the man charged forward, bracing for impact. Realizing he had an injured arm and no running start, Zed had the shadow take the blow, then attempt to grab the man and throw him to the ground; however, Zed had the wind knocked right out of him. Feeling what the shadow did, he was unable to wrestle the brute to the ground. He decided to back off, allowing Garen to topple through the shadow as Zed reverted it to the mass-less form of a shadow; he willed the shadow to turn around and saw that the delayed execution had allowed Garen's friend to realize her ignorance of the battle and had rushed to his side. Zed wasn't going to hesitate any longer; he threw the shadow at his target by swapping its place with Garen's very own shadow, leaving a dissipating black mist behind and a creating his humanoid shadow just feet from the man. Zed seized the opportunity of surprise to take a jab into Garen's stomach, but to the assassins shock, his opponent reacted quick enough to grab his arm with both of his hands, succeeding in doing nothing more than delaying the inevitable. Just as Zed was about to overpower Garen with his shadow, the woman traveling with him made a very surprising move. She vaulted over his shoulders, landing on the arm Zed was using to try to skewer Garen. The blow did not deter him, as Zed kept his focus, ignoring the pain of the impact and the added weight resting on his arm. However, the woman did not stop there; she began to swing wildly at his shadows head. He tried to use his free arm to fight her off, but began taking blows to the side of the head. Realizing that he was about to lose his concentration, Zed allowed the shadow to revert back to its original form, slumping into the ground and becoming a shadow stretched across the ground once more. While his opponents were fumbling around, attempting to regain control of their temporary victory, Zed decided to allow the shadow to re emerge from the black pool and seize the opportunity to attack. Before Zed's shadow had even finished turning into its human form again, the Demacian soldier had taken his allies weapon and gone into a kneeling position. In the next instant a searing pain sank into Zed, as the shadow form was literally split in half vertically. The immense fury of pain struck with such intensity that Zed was no longer capable of retaining focus on his control of the shadow and it disappeared into the air, just as it had come.

Zed stood up from his kneeling position, having had his concentration completely shattered. He looked around his room, and watched as it slowly shifted into darkness. He was standing, once again, inside of the room where the councilors stood. Zed grinned, being quite amazed that they had already noticed his failure. He looked into their faces, or toward where he thought their faces would be. Their black hoods were pulled over the top of their bowed heads, making it impossible to see their true expressions. Regardless, he knew that they were not pleased.

"You do realize that you have wasted a perfect opportunity, right? That he could have been completely eliminated but now he is most likely fleeing the island and on alert for an assassin?" One of the councilors said to him, using a less than satisfied tone of voice.

"Do not worry. He will not be able to detect the shadows" Zed replied, still retaining his grin.

"Obviously that logic is somewhat flawed" the councilor growled. "We are assigning you a different one of our assets. If your target keeps his company, or picks up more, you will need assistance". Zed was not opposed to the idea, much the contrary. He liked weak willed individuals with strength; they make the perfect soldiers.

"Very well" Zed said solemnly. He turned to leave the room through the doorway that stood in the chamber and saw someone else walking in through his exit. The beast had a foul stench about him, armed to the tooth with primitive weapons and barbaric tools; the creature was most likely his new "partner", and bore a close resemblance to a lion. Zed knew his place and decided not to ask or question, and proceeded to exit the room, finding himself standing, once again, inside of his own room.


	8. Chapter 3C: Talon's Memories

Talon awoke, yet again. He felt as if all he did lately was wake up. He couldn't move, still being bound to his bed with his back facing upwards. It seemed to him that his wound had healed significantly, but he had no idea whether or not he would be capable to move around on his own in his current condition. He felt like a dog with a bad leg, left on the street to die, just to be picked up by disgusting filth of a person, too lost in their own self pity to feel use in the world, and choosing to care for something else to permit themselves the ability to feel valuable.

He turned to face the doorway as he heard heavy, awkward footsteps resonate from the hallway behind it. After a few moments of staring at the entrance to the room, Yorick entered the scene. The large man walked over to Talon's resting spot and repeated the same tasks he had done what seemed to be hundreds of times; removing the bandages from Talon's back and applying a bone chilling ointment into the wound. He finished quickly and went on his way towards the exit of the room.

"Yorick" Talon called out before the brute had left.

"What do you need, warmskin?" Yorick replied.

"I was just wondering if you had any idea when my wounds would be healed", he asked.

"I doubt it'll be anytime soon. The cut you received was grave. It very easily could have sent you to the grave itself. You're lucky to be in the hands of someone who can make sure that you aren't dying anytime soon". The grave digger seemed to be quite full of himself in his statement, however, it was a well deserved claim. The man was keeping Talon alive, even though he wasn't quite sure how or why. Presumably the vile liquid he kept pouring on the wound had something to do with it.

"Do I have to remain tied up?" Talon snorted at the man. "It is quite an unenthusiastic existence to remain face down on a bed for eternities". Yorick actually laughed at this. A dull roar that lacked any sort of emotion, but it was a laugh nonetheless.

"You have no idea what eternities are warmskin" Yorick shot back. "I would sooner give up my shovel than allow my existence to persist, had it been my choice". Talon looked at him, very puzzled by this statement, while noticing that Yorick was, even now, grasping his shovel in one of his hands. Once Talon thought about it, the man had never once let go of the shovel in all of the time he had seen him. He was also a champion of the League of Legends. Talon had no idea how he had managed to earn that title by digging graves and wearing rags, but the question wasn't all that important; what was curious to Talon is why the grave digger would fight in the League with a shovel. He would also summon ghouls to his aid; a strange and yet somehow successful fighting style.

"Just how long do you plan to hold on to that grimy old shovel? Wouldn't it be easier to dig with a spade that didn't have a handle more crooked than your spine?" Talon snarled, referring to the hunch in Yorick's back.

"A mind that belongs to such a petty fool would never understand the meaning of my tool. It does far more than just 'dig'. It creates the resting spot for those who need passage to the afterlife. Without someone with the dedication to bury the deceased for the decades that me and my family have, there would be so many souls just floating in space, tormented for eternities. Every member of my family since the dawn of time has served this world in the act burying its dead, just to sit here and receive harassment from the thick headed warmskins like yourself, who cannot even comprehend the importance of my existence. But do continue. Your lack of intelligence amuses me". Talon glared at him, quite aware of the fact that he was being mocked. If he was in any better state than he currently was, he would leave the ogre face down in a ditch, having not only stabbed him to death, but having found his soul and banished it to the afterlife, sure to never come back. But he knew verbalizing such a threat would only provoke the same response as last time, a laugh and some comment about the undead. He decided to lay there silent, hoping Yorick would take his leave.

After a brief moment, Yorick had realized that his big mouthed guest had decided to keep it shut, and turned to make his way of the room for a second time. However, he was interrupted by yet another shout from Talon.

"If your family has dug graves for generations, than why are you still doing so? Shouldn't the task have been passed on?"

"I made a mistake. One that I pray no one else makes" he said with a more than usual amount of glum in his voice. He left the room, closing the door with a thud. Talon continued to stare at the wall, wondering how in the world he had ended up here. The most recent time that he had tried to remember what had happened on that night when he had last talked to Katarina, he was interrupted by the hulking grave digger entering the room.

"Where did I leave off..." he muttered to himself. "Oh yes, I was walking through the halls of the Institute of War..." Talon's memories slowly began to come into a clearer vision as he thought back to that fateful night that seemed to take place so long ago.

Talon entered a room at the end of a long corridor, standing in an isolated and forgotten area inside of the Institute of War. He had been guided to the room by following the audible path of fighting as it resonated through the halls. He had been looking for Katarina, who was missing from her room. He looked inside of the room as he arrived. It was fairly empty omit a few decorations in the corners, and its walls and floor were a pale blue colored marble, with a hallway extending out from every wall of the room.

There were two people in the room; one of them was woman he had been looking for, Katarina. She was slim and agile, almost a foot shorter than the man she was fighting, and wore her long red hair out, flailing about her face as she fought. The man with her was a giant in comparison, he went by the name of Garen; he was bulky and clad in armor bearing the crests of his home country, Demacia.

When Talon approached, the two warriors weren't exactly as locked in combat as he had expected them to be, judging by the sounds he had heard resonating throughout the hallways. Talon slipped around the corner of the entrance and stood amongst the shadows along the side of the wall, watching the scene on front of him. The two seemed to be performing some sort of dance; perhaps a tactic one was passing on to the other or some sort of absurd method of bonding. He watched as a man of great size spun around in circles with his sword extended, creating a whirlwind of razor sharp death awaiting a victim. He was not aiming the maneuver at anyone, but more so showing it off or exemplifying it. Katarina stood more still than Talon had ever seen her, watching Garen's ever movement. After he halted his spinning, he allowed Katarina to try to mimic the maneuver. She begun to do so but was stopped as soon as she became overrun by a feeling of dizziness. The two exchanged a few words and then launched straight into combat. Talon rolled his eyes. He had assumed that the two had been fighting, but needed to see them doing so before he could make an assumption. And yet neither of them had managed to notice the assassin standing along the side of the room watching them. Obviously the two were more engaged in their combat than they were in keeping their discrepancy.

A few blows were traded back and forth between the two until Katarina managed to knock the brute to the ground with a dramatic dive, digging her daggers into his armored side and physically thrusting him to the ground. The stunt was awfully impressive, but Talon needed to move quickly. Fighting inside of the Institute of War was strictly prohibited, and Talon did not want to think of what kind of consequences could arise from any sort of injury or potential death that would ensue if the assassin did not move swiftly enough to save his life. Within an instant, Talon found himself face to face with Katarina, Garen on the ground behind him, and one of Katarina's throwing knives held firmly in his own finger tips, a light trickle of blood seeping out from around the metal's blade edge. But his maneuver was in vain. While he has succeeded in blocking the potentially lethal dagger toss from striking Garen, it was not needed. The Demacian clumped in the corner had reacted to her attack, unlike Talon had expected. He heard a slicing of flesh and few light clanks as the tattered ends of his metal tipped cape hit the ground behind him, having been severed from Garen's sword.

"Talon…" She had said to him, in a very soft and quite voice.

"I thought I told you to stop fighting before the League exiles you" he replied, attempting with all of his might to retain a calm tone despite the severe pain he endured.

"I… well…" She had started before turning and leaving the room.

The memory started to fade out, and all that Talon could remember was falling to the floor and hearing shouting and screaming around him. He had been told to trust the ones who he was left with, and was hoisted upon the shoulders of the mighty Demacian man. Not much was remembered past that. Talon did have a reoccurring dream of flying through the night, over the ocean, intangible; almost as if he was a ghost. It was a strange dream and he had no idea if it was linked to the further events of that night or if they were just random dreams occurring in the consciousness of a restless soul. Talon lay in his uncomfortable bed, tied down with an open wound exposed to the sky, wishing that he had something else he could do with his time. He sighed. The last thing that he remembered was confessing to Katarina that he loved her. He wasn't sure why he had said this, or even if it was true; but he does know that e genuinely thought he was going to die that night, and perhaps those were the words he wanted to leave this planet having said. He never had been one to reminisce on the past, but in his current situation it was about all that he could do. He shifted his head to the other side of his rock like pillow and closed his eyes, allowing yet another memory to reemerge for the first time since it had taken place, many years ago.

"Why are my skills being wasted on puppy guarding a beginner? Aren't I considered more valuable than that?". Talon spoke to himself, thinking aloud of his anger at his new assignment. He sat high up on a perch around a Demacian camp, waiting for General Marcus Du Couteau's daughter, Katarina, to execute her first target. It was the simplest of simple tasks; assassinate a low ranking Demacian officer. Talon couldn't fathom why the general would be concerned about his daughter, aside from being his daughter. She had been trained by the man himself, so if he had any concern for her it would be due to a lack of training on his own part, however, he was the best assassin in the land; he even trained Talon half of what he knew about the art of the blade. If this was Marcus' only concern, then it was a misplaced one. It was more likely that the General had a different reason for posting Talon here, but that particular reason was not arising soon enough to keep Talon's interest.

"This is colder than the intestinal track of Freljord soldier... I would know" Talon stated, referring to frozen wastelandish country to the northern side of Valoran. The temperate was low, the winds were strong, and it was in the middle of the night, while the assassin stood absolutely on top of a perch along the outside edge of the Demacian camp, peering down to the inside, awaiting Katarina's arrival to carry out her mission: the combination did not make for a warm circumstance.

While he stood at his post, attempting to refrain from shivering away his position, he noticed a woman, dressed in slick black leather with long flowing red hair, enter the camp.

"Someone ought to give her a damn map next time, not that it would have made a difference. I've never met a woman in my life with a sense of direction". He shifted to a sitting down position and continued to watch her actions with his hawk like eyes as she infiltrated the camp below, slipping from shadow to shadow, being sure not to get caught. "There must be a mastermind at work here", Talon started. "Someone has managed to accumulate the largest number of mentally deficient soldiers ever seen, from throughout the lands, and post every one of them on guard tonight, in the same camp, and not bother to have a single well capable man watch over them to ensure that they don't spend ninety percent of their time sleeping". Talon began looking over the camp, counting the number of soldiers that were currently asleep or occupied with some other pitifully useless task, when he noticed a new arrival to the carnival scene; a Demacian general had entered the camp. "Perhaps someone noticed the massive lack of brain matter and decided that someone should babysit them". However, Talon was not the only one to take note of the new arrival. Katarina was about to enter the tent of the low ranking Demacian officer when she caught sight of the most recent clown to enter the camp. She grinned with a sharp spear of evil penetrating into her cheeks. Talon knew the stupidity of what she was about to do, judging by the grin on her face, long before it happened.

Katarina slipped away from the tent and slid through the camp, making her way to newly arrived general's quarters. She stalked him through the night, waiting for him to arrive at his destination and become comfortable with his surroundings. After a relatively short amount of time, the general and all of his guards had made their way into the tent and settled down. Along the way, Katarina made sure to count the number of guards. She walked around the tent, checking to location of their shadows outlined in the cloth that made up the tents walls. When the time was right, Katarina walked into the entrance and stabbed the door's guards in the hearts with one dagger in each hand. She then used a skill she had been taught from her father, passed down for generations, which allowed her to vanish from one location and appear in another, a sort of short ranged teleport: the technique is called the shunpo. She quickly moved from guard to guard, slitting their throats and using shunpo to appear at the next and mimic the assassination. She then stood in the room with no one but the general, as all bodies hit the ground in unison. The general looked at her with eyes wide open, quaking in fear. That same sinister grin eroded over her face as the man called into the night, seeking help. His cries were cut short as Katarina's blade found its way to his throat. She slit the back of the tent open and slipped away through the gap. By the time reinforcements had arrived, she was far from the camp.

Talon had seen enough. He left his perch, half frozen and still upset with his assignment, to return to Marcus and report what had happened. He traveled quickly back to Noxus by horse, where he found General Du Couteau to be fairly un affected by the news he had been presented. He handed Talon an envelope that seemed to be prepared quite awhile ago.

"Take this back to that Demacian camp. Leave it on the desk of the man Katarina was sent to assassinate originally. I'll have a new horse waiting for you. It is fast enough to get you back there before daylight appears. Move quickly, Talon". The General spoke softly, but firmly. While confused, Talon did as his master had asked, speeding off back to the small camp on the outskirts of Demacia, cursing at himself for having forgotten to grab a coat while he was at home. The night's crisp air cut into his skin, sending shivers straight to his spine. Once he finally managed to arrive at the camp, his century long ride was matched with a few minutes of infiltrating it with ease despite their high alert from the previous assassination from that night, and placing the letter on the Demacian officers desk. He slipped out quietly and remounted his horse to ride back into Noxus for the second time that evening. As he rode, he watched the sunrise on the horizon. He couldn't stare at it for too long, because every ounce of his body prayed for it to rise faster and provide this wretched terrain with some warmth, however, the more he watched it, the more he swore that it was actually setting back into the hills around him, taunting him and his lack of heat. He arrived at the house of Du Couteau, hands blue from the cold and face blanked of emotion due to every ounce of his energy having been spent on keeping himself conscious and warm. The first thing he did on arrival was light up a fire place and sit in front of it, planning to doze off momentarily. Before his mind slipped away into a journey of dreams, Marcus entered the room.

"I thank you for your work, Talon. You have done well", he told the man warming himself in the fire's glow. The words were replied to a pair of icy blue hands being held into the air, looking steps away from having been frost bitten to the point of needing amputation. Marcus replied with a grin; however Talon's back was turned to him, keeping his face as close to the warmth of the fire as possible. "You may wanna listen to the word on street when you are up to the task. But in the meantime, get some rest. I will need you to go with Katarina when she sets off on her next assignment."

Talon growled in annoyance. "Baby sitting again..." He snarled dully, half because of his lack of energy and half because he did not want to show disrespect to Marcus. "When will she be given her next assignment?" He asked.

"It will not be given. However, you will know when the time comes". Marcus left the room with this sentence, leaving Talon slightly confused, but too tired to care. He dozed off in front of the warmth of the fire, not to wake up until late that afternoon.  
When he awoke, He set off to the town square to get some food. He hardly planned on buying anything, seeing as it was much cheaper to steal it. As he finished pilfering a loaf of bread off of a distracted baker's cart, he overheard the conversation that had diverted his attention from his goods.

"Is that so?", the baker said to a townsfolk.

"Absolutely", the man replied. "Not a single one of the soldiers survived".

"And you say it was an ambush? It seems so strange to see a Noxian army get ambushed, even if it was a relatively small one. Makes you wonder how such a lowly ranked officer managed to get a hold of such information and get the orders to pursue it! Why wouldn't they let a general take on the task? I'm sure he'd have more strategic knowledge to do it better".

"Well I had heard that he was upset one of his higher ranking officers, and a close friend of his, had been murdered in his sleep in the dead of night. Perhaps he had just..." Their conversation continued but Talon had lost interest. He began to think about the contents of the note he had slipped onto the desk last night. He walked through the streets aimlessly, munching on his stolen loaf of bread as he spoke silently to himself.

"They must have been rambling about the same camp Katarina and I had entered last night, all of the facts line up, assuming any of it was true. What if Marcus set it up himself? What if I gave them the coordinates of the Noxian party that was ambushed? Not that it bothers me. Those filthy honor suckling hogs got what they deserved, and if it was something to be worries about, Marcus would not have sent Talon out to perform such a task". Talon finished his free food, along with an apple and chunk of meat that he managed to swipe from the conversational barterers about the town square, and made his way back to the house of Du Couteau.

Once he arrived he immediately noticed that there was a problem. The walls were decorated with daggers, stuck so deeply into them that you'd have thought their wielder was aiming for a demon on the other side. Marcus was in the hallway, wrenching the blades out of his walls as best as he could. He caught sight of Talon, gave him a grimace, and nodded. Talon immediately exited the house and mounted one of the horses in the stable. He galloped towards the Demacian camp, once again, to go watch over Katarina. Clearly she had found out what the man she had failed to assassinate had accomplished, being allowed to live. "But just what was Marcus attempting to achieve with this?" Talon thought aloud. He would find out soon enough. Luckily for him, it was daytime during this journey across countries, and he did take the time to pack a coat in the event that his return trip was made at night time. He rode in silence, as he was used to, hardly ever spending time with others or going on missions as a pair. Partners were just a liability to Talon.

He showed up at the camp just in time: Katarina was already there and was sprinting towards the tent housing the Demacian officer responsible for the ambush. Talon leapt off of his mount and dead bolted after her. The tent was much clearly better guarded than the one she had snuck into the night before, and this time it was broad daylight. Stealth was still plausible to a highly skilled assassin like himself, but to someone sent out in a blind rage who has assassinated a total of one man, of whom was not even an assigned target; an unseen murder attempt would be suicide. Not that carelessly rushing an encampment was a better idea, but it would definitely feel better to the one committing the act. Talon's pace was much faster than Katarina's, but she had quite the head start. By the time Talon was at the entrance to the tent where the officer was, Katarina had been inside for a few seconds. Talon knew that the situation could not be going well, and prepared for the worst. He drew upon his power of mana and vanished from sight. He was invisible, capable of moving as he pleased, but only for a few moments until he lost control and would re appear. He entered the tent to see Katarina completely surrounded by guards, armed and armored to the teeth. She spun around while standing in place in the center of the room, quickly grabbing dagger after dagger, throwing knife after throwing knife, and hurling them towards the soldiers standing about the room. While her efforts were successful, not every one of her projectiles was aimed as well as she would have liked them to be. Many of the more heavily armored foes just deflected the incoming blades, and continued to approach the visible intruder. Talon acted on instinct, knowing that she was in peril. He flew to her side, crouching down so that he did not get hit by her whirlwind of cold steel. He took out a bundle of small circular blades, and held the in a stack. He carefully analyzed one of the soldiers approaching Katarina's position and noted that there was a distinct gap between the helmet and breast plate, exposing the neck's soft flesh. Talon made the quick assumption that the soldiers were all armored similarly and with extreme speed and precision, he rotated around three hundred and sixty degrees while propelling a blade from his stack directly towards each of their exposed necks. He nailed nearly every one, leaving just a few alive in the group, one of them having been Katarina's target. Talon figured that he would allow her to do the honors. A few of his thrown blades ricocheted off of the armored opponents, and one of them came whizzing towards Katarina's head. She saw the projectile and quickly doubled back to avoid fatality, but the razor edge managed to cut across her eye vertically. Talon felt that even with a slight wound, she was still in good enough to shape to finish off the few remaining soldiers, and he shifted out of the tent, allowing his camouflage to wear off as soon as he was out of vision range of any of the combatants inside. He ran towards his horse, trying to make it out before anyone caught on to his presence. He was not supposed have fought alongside Katarina, but he was meant to make sure she was safe, and the easiest way for Talon to do so was to just kill off those who posed a threat. Katarina had not managed to notice Talon's presence in the battle, having been preoccupied with her own tornado of flinging daggers and due to Talon's invisibility. Presumably, she thought that the ricocheted blade had been one of her own.

Talon climbed atop his stead and set off down the same path towards Du Couteau's manor for the third time in a day. The intense usage of mana had taken a toll on Talon, and while he was not cold on this return trip, his body was exhausted. All he wanted was to get home and assure Marcus that his daughter was on the way, safe from harm. The horse trudged onward, clearly just as tired as Talon was, but devoted to its cause for reasons its rider could not fathom.

When Talon arrived back at the house, he immediately went to Marcus, who did not even need more than to see Talon's presence to be reassured that everything went well. He dismissed Talon with a nod, and the assassin crept back into the room where Marcus allowed him to sleep, where he collapsed and remained for quite some time...

Talon lay in Yorick's bed, shivering lightly at just the thought of how cold he was that evening. There was one other time where he remembering being so cold that he couldn't believe that his fingers made it out attached to his hands. He had been sent deep into Freljord, the icy desolate region in the northern part of the continent. It was strange for Talon to spend so much time reminiscing on the past; usually he planned to forget who the man he killed was as soon as he pulled his blade out of their flesh. But being stuck tied down to a mattress with nothing to do but think to himself, he found it easiest to spend his time resting, dreaming, and remembering the life he has lived. So he shifted his position as much as he could to try to get more comfortable and lay there thinking about the miserable frost bitten lands that only the insane could consider comforting.

Talon stood at the entrance to a rundown factory, in the middle of Zaun. Marcus had requested that he steal a schematic from the factory on his way to Freljord, where he would assassinate a king-to-be. While Zaun was a little out of the way, it contained an underground tunnel system that would bypass the body of water and mountainous terrain he would have had to cross otherwise to gain access to Freljord. Plus, the schematic information seemed to be a little sudden, seeing as Marcus assigned him to the task as he was on his way out of the door. It must have been decently important that it be obtained quickly if he did not bother to just get a different spy to retrieve it, but too urgent that he receive it if he could wait until after Talon returned from Freljord.

The assassin walked towards the factory, entering it through a broken out window after he vaulted the nearby barbed wire fence. Once inside he quickly began to realize that while it looked like a factory on the outside due to its large smoke stacks and square structure constructed from primarily bricks, the inside was a lot more reminiscent of a laboratory. Once he set foot inside of the small room, he immediately heard voices. Perhaps it wasn't abandoned like he had initially thought. Talon was not quite sure where these schematics that he was looking for were held, so he stood in a shadowy corner of the room while he contemplated what his options were. He could search the entire building, however it was much larger than he would have liked it to be, he could interrogate one of the employees, or he could try to get onto one of the hextech computers nearby and break into their database. Talon wasn't very much of a hacker, so he decided to scrap that idea. That left searching and interrogating. He walked through the hallways sliding into open rooms as he heard voices approach. He managed to maneuver through the laboratory unseen for much longer than he had imagined, but none of the rooms he had searched held anything of remote importance. Rooms labeled with signs saying restroom or janitor's closet we left untouched as the assassin scanned the area. Eventually he came to a plaque with the word CEO plastered across it in large golden letters. Had the institute looked any less rugged than it did, Talon would have been much more cautious about entering such a room; however, it did look like a wretched excuse for a research facility. Talon proceeded with minimal concern, sliding around the corner of the door frame without touching the lightly cracked open door. He made his way to the side of the room and hid along the side of a bookshelf, back resting to the wall. There was one man inside of the room, busy typing away on his computer at the desk he was sitting at. The man had not even tried to look up as Talon had entered the room, too focused on his work to allow any slight sounds to divert his attention. Talon decided that he could abuse his insolence and camouflaged himself, drawing on the mana from the world around him. While he normally could not attempt such an assault due to the fact that invisibility is neither silent nor invulnerable, the man he was about to attack was both unarmed and deaf from focus. Talon sprinted across the room towards the man at the desk, took the flat end of his blade, and bashed it against the back of his head. He fell forward, smashing a few keys on the keyboard, and slumped back into his chair. Talon relieved himself of his camouflage and courteously pulled the chair backwards, allowing the limp man to tumble to the floor. Pleased with his work, he searched the CEO for any sort of information or keys that would allow him access to more of the facility. Talon took the man's badge which was lined with a barcode and decided to see what exactly had kept the man too preoccupied to notice the ambush. The monitor held a typed out log, which read the following: "Still no sign of the damned scientists who were testing our amorphous combatant. I cant believe that they just took off like that while we were so close! It was contained in the lower portion of the lab, so its no surprise that they were able to just take off like that. Our scientists are still attempting to recreate it but if the original chemical composition was ever written down it has ben well hidden seeing as none of these numbskulls have managed to obtain it yet. I feel like we searched the lab where the prototype was held at least a hundred times. Perhaps its about time I just go down there and search their data logs. Maybe one of them typed it in and never bothered to put it anywhere else. The scientists in charge of him were never the brightest I bet that the computers password isnt anything more advanced than ZAC. But Im tired at the moment, so Im going to close out todays log with iopuhnk;lm ,." Talon grinned at his addition to the log, having inserted it with the CEO's head, and left the room with his new found information. Things were just too convenient at times. He made his way to the lower portion of the lab and found a room labeled "Amorphous Prototype". While neither word meant a whole lot to Talon, he recognized both of the words from the log of the CEO. He entered the room by swiping the pilfered badge through the door lock and entered the room. He shut the door behind him to ensure that no one became suspicious of his presence. Talon scanned his surroundings to find a cluttered room with documents thrown every which way from a countless number of workers searching for the formula themselves. Talon approached a computer in the middle of the room and found it sitting on a screen requesting a password. Recalling the log, he entered three letters in capitals into the computer, Z, A, and C. The computer whirred as it loaded up a different screen, displaying a large number of logs, each one labeled with a different date over the course of a few months. Talon assumed that if there was a log containing the information that he needed, it would be in one of the earlier logs. He flicked through them, reading each one carefully. They ever so slowly unfolded some time wasting story about how this scientist couple began to grow attached to this combatant that they had created, but Talon did not come to read a stupid drama. He began to more so skim than he did read and was coming to the end of the logs when he noticed one was sitting in the computer undated. Curious, he opened it up and began to read. It contained nothing more than a serious of numbers and letters, perhaps a chemical compound of elements that Talon was not aware of. He shuffled through the garbage that littered the desk until he found a pencil and a piece of paper; on which he wrote down the exact sequence that he found written upon the computer screen. He checked multiple times to ensure that the data matched exactly, and proceeded to delete the undated log from its history.

"This is just too easy" Talon said to himself, chuckling. He folded up the paper and slid it into a small pouch that he was carrying. He logged out the computer and turned to face the doorway; it was blocked by a large green gelatinous mass, flailing about uncontrollably. Talon wrinkled his forehead, quite confused as to what he was looking at. Before he had time to ponder the confusion, the being catapulted itself at Talon. He rolled out of the way, expecting it to have splattered across the floor due to the massive amount of force that it had just unleashed in attempt to pancake him. He looked at the blob sitting on the ground to see that his conclusion was correct. He laughed and began to proceed towards the door as he had originally planned, but found it quite difficult to pick up his feet. He looked down to find that his feet we trudging through a greenish goo, spreading out to cover most of the floor in the room. He sighed at the pathetic attempt to hinder his progress, and bent down to cut his feet free. As soon as his blade touched the mass, it quaked in pain and sucked all of the gelatinous material from around the room back to a center point where it formed into a ball and began to roll towards Talon. It's speed was tremendous for having not been given any sort of force to propel it forward in the first place. It smashed desks, tables, and chairs as it steamrolled towards Talon, clearly with the intent of flattening him as well. Talon drew out a number of projectile blades and threw them rapidly in a volley at the oncoming being. The daggers stuck into its mass, receiving the same sort of pain reaction as it had before. It continued to roll forward and ended up pushing the knives even farther into its green mass, inciting more pain. It stopped, feet way from him, to crumple down into a heap, in too much pain to proceed with its original objective. Talon turned away, once again, to make his way out of the room. Not to Talon's surprise, there was a loud springing sound as the blob bounced itself into the air, allowing the daggers to fall to out of its body and to the ground. It continued to bounce, crushing the obstacles in its path, as it made its way towards the assassin. He rolled his eyes and drew out another volley of blades. This time however, he threw them straight up into the air. The blob bounced towards him, flying in at an angle, en route to crush him if he stood still. Talon closed his eyes and used the same technique that he had experienced Katarina and Marcus himself perform time after time again: the shunpo. He preferred a more offensive form of the technique to the defensive one. Instead of using the teleport to create an aura about himself to increase his bodies tolerance to pain, he would use it to create an aura to dilute others tolerance. This skill took a large about of mana control to execute, but proved to be very beneficial. As Talon was removed from existence just before he was crushed to submission, he reappeared in midair besides the gelatinous creature. He kicked off of its mass and used the velocity to propel himself away from the hail of daggers raining down and landed on the other side of the room. He watched the creature slam into the ground where Talon had been just moments before and spread out due to the impact. Unfortunately for it, it was not capable of recovering from the impact fast enough to dodge the downfall of blades. They pierced through its body in a large multitude of points, pinning it to the ground. Whether or not the blob was capable of recovering from the trap, Talon was unsure. He flew out of the room and latched the door shut behind him.

Talon walked through the hallways and made his way towards the room where he had left the CEO in an unconscious heap on the floor, and placed the badge back on him. If he was lucky enough, the man would merely think that he had fallen asleep on the job, and be too embarrassed to report any sort of concern to anyone. Clearly the people of the institute were not the most intelligent, and their creations lacked any sort of brains as well; they were not going to get close to recreating their original experiment in the near future if their attempts were all left locked in a basement like the one Talon had just finished fighting. However, his task was done. He slipped out of one of the windows in the CEO's office and scaled down the side of the building, proceeding to the location of the underground tunnel entrance. He found the spot that Marcus had told him of, removed the large metal cover, slid inside, and replaced the lid.

Luckily, the underground tunnel was in fact a tunnel, and not a sewer like he had presumed it to be; that was generally what an underground passage truly meant. Navigating them was fairly simple too because there were rarely branch offs and Talon was already aware of general direction he was heading. Obviously the passageway was somewhat secret, used purely to get from one area to another; it wouldn't be surprising if they reached to every country throughout Valoran. Talon had no idea who had created them or how Marcus learned about them, but he was grateful for their convenience never the less. He walked for days, stopping occasionally for slight rests and eating his rations kept in a small backpack held tight against his back to ensure that mobility was not hindered; however, at the moment it was quite full and clunky, having been packed full of cold weather gear to ensure he did not turn into a beautiful ice sculpture to attract tourists while he spent time in Freljord. He pulled out a small portrait of his target to examine it carefully before he had to search for the man. It was at that time that he noticed the lighting of the tunnel; it was a blue luminescence that glowed upon the piece of paper in his hands, allowing the sharp lines and shadowy details to come into life. He looked around the tunnel, curious as to what was emitting the light. He saw small stones set into the walls, floor, and ceilings, providing him with the innocent touch of light. They were peculiar, unlike any sort of gem he had ever seen, providing a glow without any source of power or energy. He gave up on trying to figure out what the mystery behind these stones was and looked back down at the picture he had. The man was absolutely ripped, containing well honed muscles on every portion of his body including his neck. He wore bands of metal around his arms, serving no purpose other than to show how much they were stretched out from the massive build up of muscle he had creates since the time of the bands placement. His left arm was armored and he wore a helmet with horns protruding from the sides of the head. He did not wear a shirt, probably for the reason of showing off his muscle and natural endurance of the cold. The bottom half of his body was cloaked in chainmail, resembling a kilt. His boots were plated in metal and came up high enough on his legs that the kilt covered any skin exposed by the boots. The most striking thing about the photo was the massive sword that he carried. In the picture provided, it seemed to be dragging along the ground behind him, as if the effort needed to pick the blade up was much too intense to endure for as long of a time as needed. A caption sat at the bottom of the page, the letters spelled out the name "Tryndamere". He would be a tough opponent, and a stealthy kill would be best, if plausible. A long fight would leave Talon exhausted, seeing as the man's endurance was clearly defined in the ripple of his muscles. His decision to wear no shirt would be his downfall however, leaving his stomach, and the vital organs contained within, exposed, allowing them to be penetrated by one slash of his steel blade. He chuckled lightly to himself and folded up the paper, reinserting it into his pouch. Eventually he came across a ladder, leading back to the surface. He climbed the ladder and tried to push off the cover to the hole, but found that it was frozen shut. He groaned as he thrust one of his blades into a gap, punching it through the ice, and prying it open by wiggling it back and forth for a few minutes until enough of the cover was separate from the base that he could punch his way out of the tunnels system. He got to the surface and scanned the icy wasteland that lay before him. He quickly pulled out his extra layers of clothing and dressed himself into them. He wore a coat with a thick fur hood that he pulled tightly over his head. His pants were lined with fur on the inside, but were merely cloth on the outside. The whole outfit was white, allowing him to be invisible at a distance. His usual blade tipped cape was replaced by an L shaped cloak, with a sharp blade creating the bottom of the L. It tied around his neck at the top of the L shape, and the straight line held it along his back. This allowed for Talon to use the rear blade as a weapon, while the fierce winter winds would not blow into the cape and hinder his movement. His boots had a spike blade along the heel; digging straight into the icy ground, with cleat spikes along the bottom of the front of his feet, to give him a gripping surface to pry the heel blade out of the ground as he walked, plus, it could double as a weapon.

Talon slogged through the barren cold, not sure where to begin. A storm was whirling about him, decimating his vision beyond a fifty foot radius around him. He didn't quite have a sense of direction, but he kept to a straight path, being sure that his visible footprints made a straight line, ensuring that he was not staying from a linear path. He walked through the ice, feeling the freezing watery snow slush into his boots and around his legs. The cold was digging into his calves, hindering his movement to the point that he felt he was just going to collapse and die here, its sharp sting stabbing in just as his blade had done to so many individuals in his past.

When Talon felt that he was about to just cave into the cold, he saw a light glowing in the distance. The sight inspired him to such extremities that his plod became a run, hindered be the bladed traction of his boots to prevent him from sprinting. As he drew near the light, he found it to be emanating from a small village of three or four huts of some sort, with a fireplace in the center. His pace slowed to a walk as he came closer. Inside of the village's borders, a fat man with an orange beard reaching his waistline accompanied by an obscurely bald head and very large hands a feet stepped out of one of the huts. He immediately greeted him with a warm smile and huddled him back into one of the tents.

"Lad, you can't be walkin round a place like this when its storming mightier than a drunkard who is outta cash! You gotta be settin inside where its warm, drinking some grog and waiting for the time to pass! Here!" The fat man smiled broadly and handed him a flask containing a purplish colored liquid. Talon took the flask and examined its contents intently, as if it were potentially poisoned and he would be able to see it inside of the drink. The man laughed at his actions and took a sip from his own mug. "But hey, where are my manners! Name's Gragas, I live in these hellatious lands and make myself some grog, best you'll find all around!" The man spoke with an occasional hiccup, and much louder than he needed to. He was quite clearly at least lightly intoxicated; however, this could be used to Talon's advantage. He took a sip of the concoction in his hands and found, to his astonishment, to be quite tasty. He didn't intent on chugging the alcohol but he was quite glad that he had something less bitter than the cold outside to consume. He sat in silence, drinking his liquid and warming himself to the large fire pit burning in the center. "So what in the name of Avorassa where you doing way out here eh? Musta been brutally important if you couldn't wait for this storm to pass!" Talon continued to stare into his mug, but decided that speaking to him would at least get him to shut up a little, and being drunk, he may have valuable information to spill quite easily.

"I'm looking for a man, by the name of Tryndamere. Have you heard of him?" He asked the fat drunkard.

"Ah, yeeas. I have heard of him a bit. I know he likes to roam from tribe to tribe and spar with the toughest of warriors. I haven't seen him around these parts lately, but I'm not here all that often. However! Queen Ashe is living in one of these tents at the moment, residing until the storm dies off. She may know a bit of information as to where he may be. In the mean time, I need to get some people to test out my ale with me! I just made this batch using an icy shard that I had found deep within this frozen pile of rubble. Lets head outside and see if anyone wants to join in eh?" The large man blundered out of the tent, just like that. Talon, a little dazed from his actions, stood up and followed him outside, a sharp pain streaking through his legs to remind him that he was still half frozen. He lumbered out of the tent and saw a 5 or 6 people gathered about, discussing some insolent matters about peace and unity among the tribes. Talon didn't bother to pay attention, but he did notice Gragas approaching the group, quite dissatisfied that he was being ignored. The bearded man did not take being ignored very kindly, and grabbed the sturdiest and loudest mouthed man amongst the group and smashed his forehead into the other's skull. The head butted man was about Talon's height, but much more largely built with thick blonde hair setting atop his head in a mess, coming down to form a beard that was kept in a similar manner of uncaring. The melee attack did not seem to hinder him at all, but more so enrage him. He lifted his fists and demanded Gragas fight him, there and now. The massive man laughed and slugged him besides the head with a club like fist, knocking him sideways to the ground. A few of the members standing around in the previously diplomatic debate jumped in at the arisen opportunity to start swinging fists. Talon remained on the outskirts, allowing the petty fools to duke it out as they saw fit. He seized the distracted opportunity to go talk to Ashe, who was also standing beside the brawl. She was a strong, skinny woman with a black cloak cut off at the sleeves and ended in a skirt. She wore boots that came up midway through her thighs and was equipped with gauntlets that appeared to emitting a frost of their own. Her eyes were a frost blue with her hair as silver as the snow on the ground around her. On her back she carried a bow unlike anything Talon had seen before. It appeared to be made purely out of ice with a chilling mist rising off of its surface. To his confusion, she did not wear a quiver around her back, just a hood that branched off into a cape, both black and lined with gold. She did not wholly resemble a queen, but perhaps that was the idea. Most would not mistake her for one, nor would Talon himself had a drunken man not so previously informed him of her title. He approached her, still in half of a limp and colder than a lizard's blood. She looked at him with despair, as if she was genuinely hurt to see a man in pain. He abused this concern and gave her a look of innocence, pulling back his hood despite the sheer cold to expose the look of sadness being faked into his eyes. He smiled weakly and pulled out the picture that he had been given to identify his target.

"Excuse me ma'am" He started. "Would you happen to know where this man is? I have been sent to deliver something very important to him, and I must find him right away". Talon spoke with a sense of lust of anxiety. She fell for the act, just as Talon had planned.

"Why yes, that man is Tryndamere. Last I saw him he was heading to a tribe to the west of here, not too far out actually. You'd be best to wait until this blizzard clears out though. You clearly are not from around here, the cold will tear you to pieces" the woman replied softly.

"Would he be travelling in this weather?" The assassin questioned, seeking to see if he would be losing a lead by remaining in place. She replied with a kind hearted giggle.

"Yes, I'd imagine so. The man is of an endurance like no other. He seeks to fight the strongest of warriors, and will stop at no end to accomplish this task. But here, I am going tent for awhile, these men will have to recover consciousness from this drunken brawl before I can try to talk some sense into them. Won't you join me? You ought to rest. You look awful". Her alluring voice alone was enough to compel him to accept the offer, but he had a mission to accomplish. If Tryndamere was on the move, he needed to be too.

"To the west you say?" He asked, pretending to have ignored her offer. Around him lay the massive and intoxicated bodies of the concluded melee, seeming to have finished in a much shorter time span than Talon had expected. Him and Ashe were the only two conscious members of the camp at the moment, and would be for quite some time to come. At least they were lying around the campfire and wouldn't freeze to death before they awoke. Not to mention that half of them, including the bearded man, were shirtless; they had to be used to the cold in some sort of manor.

"You can't POSSIBLY be thinking about going, can you? Tryndamere will not have gone too far, your delivery can wait, can't it?" She replied to Talon's question bearing a frown upon her face. He could tell he was a bit more under the influence than he had originally thought; he found himself staring into her crystal blue eyes, quite tempted to just walk into her tent and lay down until the storm passed, perhaps talk to the woman and drink the night away happily. He shook his head violently to rid the thoughts from his mind. She bowed her head and pulled a small necklace out of a pouch she wore around her waist. It was quite plain around the string but at the end sat a trinket, very large in proportion. It was in the shape of a cross; the top part of it was a hexagonal dipyramid and there was a short pole sticking out of the one of the vertexes of the six converging points. The left and right prongs of the cross were square bipyramids, joined with the rest of the structure at the vertexes. All four parts appeared to be bound together by a wrapping, containing a small red gem in the center point.

"Here", she said, handing him the pendant. "Wear this as you travel. It is said to have some sort of magical strength to shroud its wearer in protective veil. You will find this useful as you trudge through the storm, and perhaps on another day as well". Talon held out his hands to accept the gift and Ashe placed the totem into his hands. He took the string's loop and wrapped it around his neck, wearing it like a necklace. He tucked the bulky pendant into his coat to ensure that it did flap about as he ran. He nodded in approval and turned to face the onslaught of ice in front of him. Just before he stepped into hell, Ashe called out for him again.

"WAIT!", she cried out to him. "I never got a chance to catch your name!" Talon bowed his head and pulled the hood tightly over it, never bothering to turn around to face her.

"Don't worry about it. One soon-to-be dead courier is not a matter for a queen to worry her head about". And with that comment Talon set foot into the blizzard that he had just previously sought shelter from.

Talon dragged through the slush and snow, set out to the west. He immediately noticed a difference as he marched; the cold winds were not piercing into his skin as they had been before. However, they were still blowing with just as much force as they had been previously. The winds seemed to be literally blowing around him. He stood still for a second to analyze the mess he existed among. He looked to his left, where the winds were coming from, and saw them blowing straight for his face. The assassin immediately clenched his eyelids, embracing for an impact that did not come. He slowly reopened them to see the same sight as before. His mind was boggled to think that winds could be blowing straight towards him and yet they were not touching him. He reached into his shirt and pulled out the pendant that Ashe had given him. It was glowing blue, as if signaling that it's magic was at use, protecting its wearer. Talon laughed to himself, simply amazed at how easy his quest had just become. He trod on through the tundra, not even bothering to pause; he had a quest to finish and planned to stop at nothing to do so. Eventually he saw another fiery glow inside of a camp in his line of sight. He approached the camp slowly, his movement still being cumbersome due to the terrain. He noticed a lone man walking through the snow, leaving through the northern portion of the village. Talon immediately made a leeway towards him, bypassing the collection of huts completely in attempt to reach the man before he got too far away. Talon noticed that he was losing distance so he began to pick up his pace to trot. Eventually, his presence caught the attention of the man he was pursuing, who turned around to face the assassin.

"Who DARES stalk Tryndamere through a blizzard? You think you're tough do ya? C'mere! I'll slice ya in two!" The shout left Talon immobilized for a second. He had been hoping to approach him stealthily and avoid the fist fight that he was clearly at a disadvantage in. The barbarian rushed him with a bloodlust a Talon quickly pulled two bladed gauntlets out of his backpack and equipped them to either arm. He looked up in time to see a sword almost as big as its wielder being dropped down onto his skull. He rolled sideways to avoid it, using the bladed cape on his back to keep his traction as his backside shifted across the ice. The massive sword split the ice beneath it as it missed its target. Talon got to his feet and pulled out multiple throwing knives, readying an assault. The berserker was prying his sword out of the ground from as Talon launched the volley of blades towards him. His vision was slightly hindered from the snow and alcohol combination, but they all flew through the air with relative accuracy. About half of them were on target, most being deflected off of the armored arm of the ripped man, and the other half finding their way into his flesh. Talon grinned as he felt that he had just succeeded in landing the first blow. Within a few minutes, his blood loss would slow him down to the point in which Talon could move in for a quick kill. He had expected a bigger fight from Tryndamere, with all of the hype he had been hearing. But it did not matter how difficult the task was, all he needed to do was succeed. To his astonishment, the man replied to his wounds with laughter, yanking all of the knives out and tossing them to the ground. Tryndamere looked at Talon, bearing a grin of pleasure on his face, lifting his sword to his side and lunging at Talon, rotating in a circle while slicking across the icy terrain and creating a small vortex of death. Talon stepped backwards to avoid the reckless assault and followed it up by executing a shunpo to arrive at Tryndamere's backside. The assassin took his bladed heal and stomped on Tryndamere's foot, allowing the blade to pass through the bone and ice beneath it before he pulled it out and stabbed into his ribcage with this gauntlet blade. Then Talon placed a foot against the barbarian's back and kicked off, spinning in the air and allowing his bladed cape to slice across the man's back. Talon landed on the ground, expecting to see his target lying on the ground in a crippled heap, but instead, he saw a man angrier than a charging bull turn around to face the assassin. He smiled from ear to ear in a demented manor before launching himself at Talon. He swung his massive blade with ease, slamming down blows onto Talon faster than he could ever do with both of his blades at the same time. It took every amount of raw energy that he possessed to deflect the attacks, leaving himself no opportunity to counter attack. Blood poured from the demonic man's side where Talon had pierced his body, dripping to the ground to create a bloody slushy mess. Talon knew that Tryndamere's boots were not providing him with any sort of traction and decided to abuse this knowledge and use it to his advantage. Talon made a slight hop backwards and dug his cleats deep into the snow. He readier his arm blades by laying the bottom portions of his arms on top of one another so that the blades lay parallel. Tryndamere jumped through the air towards him, holding his sword high above his head and smashing it down unto his helpless foe below. Talon immediately thrust his body forward to allow his blades to meet his opponent's sword. The sound of metal clashing resonated throughout the tundra and Tryndamere tumbled backwards to the ground due to his inability to regain traction upon landing the hit. Being able to concentrate again, Talon used the shunpo technique to place himself besides the fallen warrior. He took both of his blades and dug them deep into Tryndamere's stomach, twisting them about to ensure and pierce organs were not making it out of this encounter. He looked into Tryndamere's eyes, waiting for the life to slowly die from them; however, their light grew even brighter than ever before. A fury of a thousand suns burned his eyes, so intensely that Talon had to turn away from his gaze. He saw a lightly colored image of a hawk screech through the air beside him before it detonated into an array of sparkling mist. He wanted to figure out what it was but his attention was diverted when the man housing his blades spoke.

"I have lived through the hell of watching everything I love be smashed into pieces and stripped from my life, and yet you expect nothing more than a blade sharpened to the point of overcompensation to extinguish this fire? You are POORLY mistake!" Tryndamere shouted at his assassin. Talon blinked, as if the image in front of him was an illusion, waiting to die out. The brute grabbed Talon around the throat, lifted him off of his body, pulling the blades out of his stomach in turn, and threw him to the ground besides him. Tryndamere grabbed his blade and swung an uppercut into Talon as he got back to his feet. He raised his bladed arms to deflect the blow, but watched Tryndamere's sword smash them to pieces due to the sheer force of the impact. Talon staggered backwards, now practically defenseless, trying to come up with a plan to defeat the monster. Tryndamere yelled in rage as he assaulted his assassin yet again. Talon dodged swing after swing until he just could not keep pace any longer. The blunt end of the massive sword slammed sideways into the back of Talon's skull, forcing him to taste the bloody ice below, and bringing him to the very edge of consciousness. He rolled over to see Tryndamere raising his sword once again, preparing to drop the blade down like a guillotine.

An instantaneous explosion of frosted light erupted around him, blinding him for several seconds, causing the glow from the pendant around his neck to burn so brightly that it seemed to fade itself out. When the mist cleared, he saw his attacker incased in a tomb of ice, while Talon stood unharmed. Talon thought for a moment that he had been saved by an angel, but decided that everything that had just happened may very well have been some sort of hallucination from the overly strong alcohol that he had consumed earlier. Regardless, he scrambled to his feet and rushed to escape the frosted wasteland, heading towards the direction that he knew the tunnels were in. His pendant was not protecting him any longer, as if its power had been sated when the icy explosion had taken place. He marched through the snow, half conscious and heavily bruised. Possibly cut, but he was quite certain that the blood from any potential wound would be frozen solid at this point. The failed assassin marched on for hours until his legs collapsed from beneath him due to exhaustion and the bitter cold. He could not feel the lower portion of his body as he crawled through the snow, dedicated to survive. He still had the notes from the Zaun laboratory that needed to be returned to Marcus. He could not fail him now, not with such a simple task to complete. He dragged his body along, pursuing a pointless dedication until he reached the cover of the tunnel entrance. At least he would e safe from the cold once he got inside. He reached over to remove the lid and found it frozen shut, once again.

"DAMNIT!", he cursed to the wind, half expecting it to laugh in his face as a response. It's icy breeze relentlessly bashed at his face as he banged over and over on the metallic cover to the tunnel. Just when Talon's body was about to give way, the lid opened, and a man appeared its entrance. He grabbed Talon and pulled him in, closing the lid behind them. Talon was carried down the ladder and through the tunnel, slung over his rescuer's shoulder like a disobedient child.

"You have done well Talon", his rescuer said to him.

"Marcus?", he asked, almost certain that it was his voice. "I have failed. I could not kill the man. No matter how many times my blade sank into his skin, he just shook it off as if I had just caused an abrasion on its surface".

"You did not fail me Talon. I need to apologize. I set you up. I needed to know if this man was fit to rule Freljord, or if was some political nonsense joining him to Queen Ashe. So I sent my best assassin to attempt to end him. If you could not succeed, then I got the information that I needed; he is meant to be king". Talon was not sure if he should be angry at this response or proud to be considered his best assassin. He decided to respond by allowing himself to sleep, even if he was in the most uncomfortable position in the world.

As he closed his eyes in the memory, his recollection of the event faded out and Talon found himself lying in the same bed that he had been in for much too long.


	9. Chapter 3D: Ezreal's Match

Ezreal awoke suddenly the next morning due to the blue glow of light surrounding his body. At first he attempted to roll over and fall back asleep, but his body was poked by the corner of a decrepit book made with a wooden cover wrapped in cloth. The pain jolted him awake in time to realize he was undergoing on the most common, and yet his most dreaded, events inside of the League for any champion: he was being summoned. Within a few moments he sat on brick tile flooring, feeling the power of the Nexus' magic pouring through his body. The spot where he was sitting was commonly referred to as the fountain. While it contained not a drop of water, its name is derived from the fact that its magic makes the champion feel youthful again. Ezreal's grogginess from having been awoken was quickly dispersed as the Fountain's magic flooded into his body to prepare him for battle. He looked around at the champions that had been summoned to his side to fight with him on the fields of Justice. The teams were almost always five champions each. To his left he saw a broad man in a red trench coat, worn loosely exposing the white shirt he had on underneath, along with black pants and a pirate hat atop his head. His scraggly beard was chest length and his mustache grew far past the point of cleaning molding with the rest of his facial hair. The pirate wielded a scimitar in one hand and a flint lock pistol in the other. How he managed to reload the thing in the heat of combat, Ezreal will never know. He was laughing jollily as he poured a vile greenish concoction onto his blade and bullets, bubbling and foaming as the liquid touched the metal surfaces.

"PREPARE TO HAVE YAR FLEE ROTTEN, URCHAN RIDDEN CORPSES DRAGGED DOWN TO DAVEY JONE'S LOCKER YOU SCALLYWAGS!" The man boasted to the wind, as if the opposing team could hear the mocking shouts of a half drunken pirate while standing miles away from them. He came from the city of Bilgewater, on the Blue Flame Island. In combat, he was quite the teammate, which wasn't to be expected from a man who spent his time shouting out things like that. He did everything in his power to aid his allies in combat living under the policy that "no one goes down with the ship but the captain himself".

"Pipe down over there Gangplank, you're going to give me a stroke" said a light, yet sturdy, voice. The speaker wore all red garments, flourished with fancy decorations to make himself appear of high power and importance. His hair was long and pale, just like his face. He looked as if he had just seen a ghost and all the blood had drained from his face. He was cruel and sadistic fighter who curled the blood of his foes to and from their bodies, often times returning it ridden with diseases or pulling a trick as simple as giving them a type of blood that their bodies cannot accept. Ezreal wasn't quite sure how or why the man chose to fight with blood, but he honestly didn't want to know.

"Aye, I have jus' the currre fur ye Vladimir" gangplank said, referring to the man in red, while skillfully cutting the peel off of an orange with blade after having holstered his pistol. Ezreal was about to make a comment pertaining to the fact that he was cutting the orange with the same blade he had just previously coated in poison; however, the pirate did not seem to care. He finished peeling the orange in just a few seconds, then preceded to consuming the citrus in half of the time. Ezreal raised a skeptical eye brow towards him, simply amazed by the speed at which he performed the action.

Vladimir sighed loudly. "Oranges cannot cure a STROKE Gangplank. They can only help the maggot ridden, malnutritioned, SCUM that wastes their days away sailing across the ocean" he snorted.

"YAR HAR HAR HAR HARRRRR!" The pirate replied. "That what YOU be thinkin'". Vladimir rolled his eyes and shifted off to one of the lanes on the battlefield. They were standing in an area called Summoner's Rift which comprised of three primary paths, or lanes, leading from the location of one teams Nexus to the location of the other's. The Nexus is what gave the summoners the magical strength needed to summon champions and perform the tasks that they did. Destroying the opposing Nexus would successfully ensure that the other team was useless in comparison, and marked victory in the battle. The paths leading between them were lined with large structures that were referred to as towers or turrets, that shot at anyone from the opposing team who tried to attack it or champions around it. Generally, summoners would be sure to send a champion or two into each lane to ensure that the towers are contested, seeing as there are five champions on a team and only three lanes to protect.

Ezreal glanced around to try to get an idea of who he was fighting with. He immediately spotted Lux standing among the group of fighters and felt embarrassed that he had not seen her sooner. He strode through the arguing Vladimir and Gangplank, who had stopped proceeding to their lanes in order to argue about something pointless a little longer, and stood next to her.

"About time you noticed me Ezreal!" She said sarcastically, bearing a broad smile. He smiled back.

"I had no idea that I was in a match today, I was woken up when I got summoned this morning" He told her. She grinned back.

"It's been posted for weeks. And it wasn't this morning; it's afternoon Ezreal". He blushed lightly and turned so that only half of his face was visible to her.

"Well I… uh…" His stuttering was cut off as Gangplank took a firm hold on his shoulder and spun him about.

"C'mere you fluffy haired laddie, we got some booty to plunder" the pirate said to him. Ezreal cringed as he prayed that Gangplank had not intended for his comment to be as sexual as it sounded, and parted from his conversation with Lux to trudge down to the bottommost of the three lanes with Gangplank.

Ezreal stood next to an ally tower as he watched Gangplank dance and sing to himself merrily about 50 feet in front of him. It was a bit risky to stand so far away from the tower before the Nexus had spawned its first wave of minions to storm down the tower-protected lanes towards the enemy's Nexus; however, the jolly pirate hardly seemed to care. Ezreal looked across the way to see if his opponents had showed up yet. He saw two people standing near their teams tower: One resembled a Viking in his clothing and horned helmet along with his blonde hair and lengthy beard that reached down to his belt buckle which housed the loops for him to store his two hand axes; were he to ever unequip them. Next to him was a famed Noxian assassin: Katarina. She wore long scarlet hair and dressed mostly tight leather. Her outfit was lined with spare daggers to ensure that she could always hit her target regardless of their distance from her handheld blades.

As Gangplank danced about, a throwing axe and a razor sharp dagger found their ways to the ground besides him. He immediately paused his jolly jig and looked up to see where the projectiles had come from. Katarina was standing beside her tower, holding another throwing knife in her had in threatening preparation. Olaf stood further in front of the tower than she did and was shouting something at Gangplank that was inaudible at Ezreal's distance.

"Throw another one of them axes, and you'll find yourself on a one way trip to the bottom of the ocean!" Gangplank yelled back. By this point in time, the minions had arrived and Ezreal followed behind them. He floated on the outskirts of the skirmish between both teams minions and helped his teams out by shooting quick bolts of pulsing yellow energy from his enchanted glove at the enemies as they looked injured and close to death. Summoners were awarded a small amount of currency whenever their champions finished off a minion or monster, or aided in the takedown of a champion or turret. The currency wasn't used for anything outside of the Fields of Justice and was never referred to anything other than just simply "gold". The gold could be used to buy items from a vendor who set up shop in the fountains of either team. These items were handed to the champions to use in combat. This way, a team can create an advantage by performing well on the battlefield.

Ezreal, and his summoner, kept an eye on his opponents as he shot at the minions to make sure that he wasn't in any danger of being attacked. The opposing team was doing the same; just getting the finishing blows on the minions to ensure a constant gold income. Gangplank however, did not act in the same manner. Instead, he chose to sit amongst the bushes, alongside the minion flattened lane, with a bottle of rum in one hand and his flintlock pistol in the other. Between swigs from his bottle, he would shoot down a weakened minion and proceed to fumbling around with his pistol until it managed to become reloaded. This process continued for much longer than it ever should have until Gangplank decided to fire one his shots towards the blonde haired viking. The bullet, to Ezreal's amazement, landed in his thigh. He hardly seemed to notice any pain from the wound but seemed to take it as quite an insulting gesture. He immediately looked his thigh, then back up towards the location of its shooter. Much to his own dismay, Ezreal prepared to fight him. He shot a few bolts of arcane energy towards the brute as he charged towards the bushes where Gangplank sat and slammed his axes into the ground with such immense force that the blow appeared to have hurt himself a little in the process. He noticed that the pirate was no longer standing in the bushes, and there was a human sized crater in the ground in front of him. Ezreal chuckled at his barbaric efforts.

"You think something's funny, do ya?" The man said to Ezreal. An axe came flying through the air and skimmed Ezreal's arm. Under normal circumstances, the pain would be intolerable; however, in the Fields of Justice, it was minimal. In fact, he could already see the skin regenerating over the mark.

"You don't deserve the hair of a viking" he yelled out, referring to Ezreal's blonde hair. He turned to see the brute sprinting towards him. Ezreal channeled the power of his glove to shift his position away from the viking and started to run towards the shelter of his tower. The chase was slowed as the poisoned bullet's effect started to spread throughout the man's leg and cause his pace to decrease. Ez took advantage of this and turned to shoot bolt after bolt of magical energy to flux through the air towards his pursuer. The bruiser took the energy pulses and continued to storm forward, shouting with rage as he began to ignore the poisoning pain and sprint forward. Ezreal decided that his shots were not effective enough to stop the rampant charge, and turned to sprint towards his turret once again. In swiveling around, his foot got caught in the terrain and he tumbled to the ground. The berserker moved forward and prepared to smash Ezreal into a throbbing pulp. Ez began to wonder where his ally, Gangplank, had wandered off to in his half drunken adventures. As he lay on the ground, belly up and feet towards his pursuer with head and back propped up by his elbows, he saw a muscular man in a red trench coat step over him and extend a pistol bearing arm towards the pursuer. With a quick click and a loud bang the viking lay in a head on the ground. As his saver began to laugh, Ez realized that it was Gangplank standing over him. Perhaps he hadn't strayed as far away as Ez has initially thought. He was such a strange man, Ez thought to himself. Not only did he come from an island known for its looters and marauders, he was considered king of the pirates for the recognition he gained from serving in the League for the city of Bilgewater. It was truly astounding how an island so far away could stay in contact with the mainland, and have such a powerful representative, through the League of Legends. An island so far away, Ezreal thought. He visualize the map of the world of Runeterra; a map that he had seen thousands of times before. He saw the small dot marking the city of Bilgewater resting on the continent referred to as the Blue Flame Islands. It rested just east of Valoran's shores. Ezreal's mind lingered on those last words; just east...

He sat up from his laying down position on the ground so quickly that his head almost collided with Gangplank, who was still standing above him.

"Keep yer eyes open lad. One more movement like that an' you'll 'ave us BOTH lyin' on the ground" the pirate said to him. Embarrassed, he shifted around and got back to his feet. A thought hit him just then.

"What happened to Katarina?" Ezreal asked. "Wasn't she down here earlier?"

Gangplank laughed loudly in response to his question. "Better cut that hair o' yours lad, you can 'ardly see a thing. I fought 'er 'til she was forced to retreat, then turned 'round to save your sorry butt". Ez turned an even darker red then before and decided that he ought to put more of his mind into the match at hand. While death only persisted for a matter of minutes before a summoner was capable of reviving a champion at the fountain; however, dying was not a pleasurable experience in general.

"Let's go back to the fountain" Ezreal told his summoner, "We ought to have some gold to spend". The summoner started an incantation to teleport his champion back to base and they browsed the store upon arrival. Ezreal pointed to an icy glove and the summoner agreed to his decision. He slid the glove overtop his arcane one and gave it a chilling aura. The bolts he shot forth were coated in an icy aura that transferred to his targets. Hopefully that would help him escape from his pursuers in the future. In addition, he got a pair of boots decorated with small wings. They were built to prevent sliding on the slick surfaces and were enchanted to allow him to move at speeds he could never physically obtain alone.

The match progressed with one tower falling on either side after another until both teams were down to just a few left apiece. Ezreal found himself in lane with Gangplank again; however, this time he was up against a legendary duo from the highest positions of nobility throughout the icy lands of Freljord; Queen Ashe and King Tryndamere. Her arrows would act like Ezreal's new gauntlet and freeze enemies as they walk, while Tryndamere dove head first into large fights and picked off slowed targets as they tried to escape. The man was capable of inducing a rage into himself so powerful that it seemed no quantity of punishment would put him down. He was a fearsome foe, and was known for lasting through entire matches without a single fatality. Both teams waltz about, waiting for the other to slip up and create an opportunity to move in. Gangplank and Ezreal stood defending their last line tower in the bottommost lane while Vladimir and Lux mimicked in the topmost. The pair up top was clearly in more distress than he was, seeing as the opposing members were tearing away at the rocky structure that comprised it. The viking took viscous swings at the base while the fifth member of their team, a large polar bear capable of speech and combat from a small Freljordian tribe called the Urisine, clawed at the towers weapons. Ezreal knew Lux would get torn to pieces if she attempted to push them away, and Vladimir's thin stature wouldn't do much better. On the other side, if Ezreal or Gangplank left the side of their tower, it would surely fall to the Freljordian royalty; yet the same was bound to happen to the tower under Lux's protection.

"Gangplank, we gotta help 'em out, but I don't have the power to barrage 'em down on my own". Ez said to his ally. The pirate stroked his beard for a moment before turning back to him.

"But ye 'ave the range?" He said.

"Yeah, easily. I'll just have to channel the arcane energy through my glove for long enough to allow a pulse of..." Ezreal's over winded explanation was cut off when gangplank fired a shot straight up into the air right next to Ezreal's ears; clearly the pirate had become bored of the explanation long before it was finished. The shot soared skyward and screeched through air while leaving being a thick reddish cloud of smoke.

"Shoot now lad" was all that Gangplank said before turning to charge at his opponents contesting the tower. Confused, Ezreal listened to his orders and spun about to fire one large and arced true shot straight towards the enemies smashing down Lux's turret. Quick on her feet, Lux bounced backwards and charged up a laze beam of her own. Above the tower, a hail of cannonballs streamed through the open sky to hail down upon the collapsing structure and its destructors. The viking looked up and saw the hail fire, to his left to see the light essence coursing towards him, and the laze beam being projected from Lux.

"Not. Cool." Was all that was heard muttered from his mouth the trifecta of power plastered the man to the floor. As the smoke cleared, the only thing left standing was a fractured tower and, to every ones surprise, the polar bear. It appeared as if he had given up on the assault, and he slowly lumbered away from the shouldering chaos, yawned deeply, and rolled over for a nap. Meanwhile, Vladimir laughed solemnly.

"How cute. The boy can't even protect the girl without her and am angry father putting up a bigger fight than he can", the vampiric man said, referring to his three allies who had been involved in the small victory. Ezreal wanted to make a snappy comback, but he had bigger issues. His "angry father" was sprinting headlong into Ashe and Tryndamere.

Ezreal turned back around to face the people he was about to fight and saw Ashe kneeling down, whispering some sort of enchantment to her frosty arrow. She placed it into her crystalline bow and let the arrow soar through the air. As it took off, it seemed to grow in size until its head became almost human sized. The massive arrow of ice collided with Gangplank mid charge and encased him in an ice tomb from head to toe. Now Ezreal was forced into a two on one as Ashe and Tryndamere prepared to fight him at his tower. He quickly shifted positions with his gloves power to avoid Tryndamere's leap towards him, and allowed the brute's blade to smash into the stony ground where he had been standing seconds ago. Knowing he was done for, he decided to focus fire on the less resilient of the two targets; Ashe. He shot a flurry of arcane energy in her direction just to watch her duck and dodge a vast majority of them. Shooting accurately wasn't made any easier by Tryndamere standing between the two taking massive swinging attempts to lop Ezreal's head off. Then, out of seemingly nowhere, a bullet soars in the air, with such intense velocity that it appeared to have been fired from a cannon, tearing through Tryndamere's skull as he made another lumbering attempt at Ezreal's life. Gravity took his huge body to the ground and Ezreal watched as it disappeared into the air in preparation to receive the summoner's magical powers to reincarnate the man back at his team's Nexus. With most of her allies either defeated or scattered, Ashe took flight towards her own base. No one on Ezreal's team seemed to bother chasing her down; instead, they cleared out the minions pushing into the base and shopped for new items to aid them on the battle field. Ezreal was glad that he had invested in the items earlier; they helped him move around Tryndamere until he was saved. However, he still did not know how he was saved. He looked at Gangplank, who was standing aside waving his hands about in a jolly motion and drinking from his bottle of rum as he saw fit, intermittently shooting a stray minion that dared draw too close to his location.

"How did you get out of Ashe's frozen tomb so quickly?" Ezreal asked.

"YAR HAR HARRR! I told ye matey, them oranges can cure more 'an jus' sscurvy. Frost bite don' stan' a chance! YARRRR!" the pirate responded. He then took off down the centermost lane, shooting and stabbing everything in his path.

The half-insane pirate sprinted down lane with a slight gaze of kill in his eyes. It was obvious that he planned to end the match at this moment. Ezreal hurried off after him, aiding the man in defeating the pulsing waves of minions that confronted them. To his side, Ezreal could see that his allies were not all as dead set to this victory march as they appeared to be. He noticed the polar was in the middle of a heated debate with the fifth member of Ezreal's team: Zilean. He was an ancient man who possessed magical powers to warp and control time. There were some limitations to his strength, due to the fact that the magic of the opposing teams summoners would be certain to counter act any attempts to completely freeze or turn back time to allow fights to turn out differently. Nonetheless, he was, generally, a formidable ally. However, he seemed to be much more so engaged in conversation with the bear at the moment than he was with the battle going on. Since Ezreal had not even noticed his presence until now, he assumed that Zilean's participation in the upcoming skirmish was not all too necessary. Not to mention the fact that he was, in a way, keeping one member of their team out of the fighting as well.

Vladimir quickly caught up with the pack and Lux followed shortly behind. The four of them made a steady push forward and knocked down the towers in their path with easy. They made their way inside of the enemy base where one last fight between the two teams, and the follow up destruction of the opposing Nexus, would determine the victor of the match. Ezreal looked in front of him and saw the blonde haired viking, Ashe, and Tryndamere standing in front of him. He quickly took aim with his glove by pointing it towards his opponents and pressing the non-gloved hand against the gem embedded in it. Ashe countered by holding her frost coated bow up and nocking an arrow that immediately became covered in the same icy mist.

Meanwhile, Tryndamere locked eyes with Gangplank and allowed a undying rage to burn brightly in his eyes: he planned to gain vengeance. The man rushed forward with the blonde brute right beside him. From behind, Ashe lobbed a volley of mystical frozen arrows that greatly hindered Ezreal's team's chances of escaping the fight. Ezreal returned fire, with his glove's essence fluxing through the air towards the opposing trio.

A vigorous fight ensued, and neither side seemed to be backing down, despite the fact that it was a three versus four. Ezreal stood next to Lux and the two of them did their best to bombard the opponents from a distance to ensure that their lives were not at risk to the berserking men with massive weapons who were currently rampaging about in their combat with Vladimir and Gangplank.

After a few minutes of trading blows, Ezreal realized that Katarina was nowhere to be found. He glanced around in search of her.

"Hey Lux", Ezreal started, "have you seen Katarina anywhere lately?"

"Uuuummmm... No. The last time that I saw her was when she was… Well quite some time ago honestly." She replied. Ezreal was not quite sure how to take this response and realized the answer when it was too late. The woman had used her allies as a diversion until she had a perfect opening. She used her shunpo technique to teleport herself the short distance she needed to close the gap between her hiding spot and the center of Ezreal's team. Time seemed to slow as she whirled in circles, carefully rotating her feet one after another, her soft red hair wrapping around her face in a beautiful crimson blur, while throwing daggers, knives, blades, and other general sharp projectiles in every direction, each one of them landing in lethally critical points on Ezreal's allies. Ezreal made a quick motion to grab Lux's arm and shift the two of them away in an instant. As he did so, Lux left a bright ball of illuminating light behind to ensure that any pursuers would be too blinded to continue a chase. The combination of the two abilities guaranteed them a quick and successful escape; however, the rest of their team lay dead and awaiting a reincarnation by their scrambling summoners. Ezreal and Lux sat among tall grass and bushes, relatively out of view of the opposing team. They watched as the victors of the fight stomped off down the lane in which Ezreal's team had just entered, and pursue towards the Nexus. Ezreal let out a slight laugh; a mixture of relief of escape and acknowledgement of the loss that was coming. He turned to face Lux and a smile crept over her face. She let out a small laugh of a similar manner. Her laughter cause Ezreal to chuckle a little harder, and his chuckle provoked an identical reaction. This continued until the two were in hysterics, rolling in the grass and laughingly loudly to one another. They both lay in the soft ground until they could hear the loud explosion sound of their Nexus being destroyed by the opposing team, and let the light blue glow surround their bodies as the summoners brought them off of the Fields of Justice.

Back inside of the Institute of War, once the match was completed, summoners and champions alike were gathered around boasting about their victory, griping in defeat, or reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the game. Ezreal could not see Lux anywhere, and assumed that she had either already taken off, or had been dragged aside to discuss some events of the previously concluded match. He was not too interested in the simple chatter, and still had no idea, or intention of caring, what the match was played for; he had other matters to attend to. Ezreal pushed through the crowd of spectators and participators in search for Gangplank. For some reason, the loud pirate wearing a pure red trench coat was nowhere to be found. Ezreal stood in place for a moment; doing nothing more than scanning his surroundings. He felt a firm grip on his shoulder and jumped out of his skin from the shock. He whirled around and found the man he was searching for, standing right in front of him. He sighed a sigh of relief from both the realization that he was not in danger and that he had found who he was looking for.

"Ye look like yer searching high an' low for a lost fortune. What's on yer mind lad?" Gangplank asked.

"I need your help, Gangplank. How much knowledge do you have on the people and ships that leave and enter Bildgewater?" Ezreal asked in response. He got a loud, booming, laugh in response.

"Laddie, they call me King o' the pirates fer a reason. Who, er what, is ye lookin' fer?"

"Umm..." Ezreal looked around him, unsure as to whether or not it was safe to discuss around such a loud crowd. He quickly gathered that there were few people, if any, that would bother to listen in on his conversation. He turned to face Gangplank again. "I need to know if you know anything about Garen's whereabouts". The pirate smiled so widely that Ezreal could see all of the rotting or golden capped teeth that lay in his gums.

"Alrrrighty lad", he began, "I was told I could trust a blonde haired lassie with the… information o' his wurr-a-bouts. He took a small ship o' mine an' headed towards Ionia. 'Bout all I can say fer now. C'mon an' find me again if ye want the whole story". He then turned and casually made his way out of the now thinning crowd. Ezreal was fair certain that the "blonde haired lassie" Garen would have been referring to would have been Garen's sister, Lux, and not Ezreal. He wasn't sure if that was an intentional jest at his manliness or if Gangplank honestly thought he was a woman. He recalled being called "lad" multiple times by the pirate and assumed that the comment was purely intentional.

Ezreal shifted away from the crowd, just as Gangplank had. He walked down the hallways towards his room with thoughts pouring through his head. He had been wrong on his first two guesses: Garen was not in Noxus or Bilgewater. But why would he be in Ionia? Ezreal questioned. The whole thing was like putting together a puzzle. He knew he had to of started in the Institute of War, and he left at the same time that Talon did. He made note that he was heading West, assumed to be east. And at some point in time, he was in Bilgewater and left for Ionia by boat.

"But was he travelling with Talon? When would he have split? Why did he pick Ionia? And how did he even get to Bilgewater if he didn't have a boat? Perhaps I ought to go see if Gangplank knows a bit more..." His softly spoken thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of an individual in the room to his side. Out of instinct, he shifted to a location that was out of vision of the person who had appeared. The door had been open, and she had just spawned from nothing in the center of the room. Ezreal had not been given a good opportunity to look at her, other than noticing a large amount of blue in her outfit, but he was certain that he had not been spotted. He stood at the end of the hall and peered around the corner. The room's door shut tightly and Ezreal could read the following name on its plate. Quinn.


End file.
